Reclaim The Net accepts no invasive advertising and is kept going by those gracious enough to support. If you support free speech, the eradication of cancel culture, and restoring privacy and civil liberties, please become a supporter today. | In an age where the internet reigns as the ultimate tool of influence, capable of swaying economic and political tides through the dissemination of news, content, and communication, who truly holds the reins of power? As the digital landscape becomes a battleground for controlling narratives, a new breed of "professionals" has emerged: "fact-checkers" and "misinformation experts." However, revelation after revelation suggests a significant flaw in their foundation - their pronounced political biases.Today's exploration isn't just about who controls the internet - it's about who controls the truth in our increasingly online world...
Become a Supporter here.
Then get the post here. | | ACCUSED OF DELETING EVIDENCE |  | AFL this week sued two federal departments and their chiefs alleging that they illegally destroyed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) records.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and its secretary, Xavier Becerra, as well as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan have been named in the filing, which states that their actions amount to a violation of the Federal Records Act.
Read the complaint here.
Namely, AFL claims the two departments under the current administration illegally deleted emails of former CDC employees, which constitute federal records.
The case, the non-profit hopes, will serve to highlight what they say is the Biden White House "partisan two-tier justice system."
This is because, at the same time as NARA and NHHS are going about destroying the said emails without, up until this point, being held accountable, former President Donald Trump is being prosecuted over possession of presidential records.
However, if federal records are no longer kept based on allowing individuals over at the CDC to evaluate which emails to delete and which to keep (this was, in a nutshell, the NARA justification of the situation) - then the accusations against Trump made by NARA and picked up by the Department of Justice have no merit.
All the more so since in Trump's case, AFL continued, those were documents that were either personal records or non-records.
Related: REVEALED: Documents show collusion between the CDC and Big Tech
"If the federal government wants to unlawfully assert that anytime a government employee leaves an agency their records are no longer considered records of the United States, then the same assumption would apply to former presidents of the United States," AFL noted.
On top of that, there's another question that this behavior raises: "What is the CDC trying to hide?"
AFL uncovered the practice in the course of investigating the CDC's role in supporting what the organization says is "teacher-led indoctrination of children with radical gender ideology" - only to be told that disclosure of official emails was not possible because they no longer existed.
It turned out that the CDC is in the habit of deleting former employees' emails 30 days after they leave - and NARA, when asked to look into the practice, found no problem with it, revealing that they trust those working for the CDC to make these decisions.
But this comes in violation of the Federal Records Act, AFL believes.
"The rule of law cannot mean one set of rules for unelected bureaucrats and another for democratically-elected officials who happen to be a political challenger to the sitting president," AFL stated. | Reclaim The Net accepts no invasive advertising and is kept going by those gracious enough to support. If you support free speech, the eradication of cancel culture, and restoring privacy and civil liberties, get exclusive content, features, and more by becoming a supporter today.
Thank you for your support.
| | TURNING CITIZENS INTO CENSORS |  | Australia's Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has urged citizens to report content posted on social sites to what's known as the country's "chief censor," the eSafety commissioner.
Appearing on the ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast, Rowland explained to host Craig Reucassel what the current government thinks should be done about "misinformation."
Often-repeated assertions were heard that there is dangerous misinformation on social media along with exposure to "reactions and rumors" that traumatize users - because, for example, they are able to view breaking news videos "with no censorship."
(This last bit is what rubs Reucassel the wrong way, and it has to do with the recent Sydney stabbing attacks that he would evidently like "nicely packaged" first, in that way controlling how the public learns about an event and reacts to it.)
And so, clearly, both the minister and the host agree that the government should step in (even more) and intervene, the only question is, how?
One of the ideas is to come up with yet another "voluntary" (voluntary as in, "or else...") code of conduct for tech companies, probably along the lines of what is already happening in the EU.
The purpose would be to get platforms to remove even more content that's labeled as "misinformation."
Right now, the eCommissioner is the official who can order comments removed, but a "voluntary code" would obviously expedite things.
In the meantime, since according to the minister, platforms aren't "doing enough," she encouraged citizens to report content to the eSafety commissioner, turning themselves into some sort of "government censorship helpers."
Reucassel exhibited quite the zeal for censorship, remarking during the conversation that ABC Radio Sydney Breakfast flagged content on TikTok (also related to one of the Sydney stabbings), but accused the platform of not removing it.
The host revealed that the media outlet told TikTok, "We're taking down all this footage that's happened in the Wakeley stabbing, we're trying to regulate that kind of stuff."
But apparently this effort, joined by the eSafety commissioner, did not produce results - or as Reucassel said, social platforms are not sufficiently "proactive."
Even if videos have a sensitive content warning and people have to click and choose to still watch it - Rowland doesn't think that's "enough."
Rowland agreed.
"They need to do more. Keeping Australians safe online, protecting particularly children and vulnerable people from being exposed to this content is a collective responsibility."
And that's when listeners got "encouraged" to report content to eSafety. |  | For a moment, it wasn't entirely clear why the US Congress (specifically the House Judiciary Committee) decided to step into the feud created by Brazil's authorities and X owner Elon Musk.
Was it because X was breaking Brazilian law - as alleged by those authorities - or because Brazil was using X, a US company, to enforce censorship?
Now we have some answers. The short version is - House Republicans believe Brazil is abusing "misinformation" claims to clamp down on critics expressing their opinion on X.
The Committee has come out with an "interim staff report," and the title really says it all, at least as far as this US legislative arm's stance on the issue: "The Attack on Free Speech Abroad and the Biden Administration's Silence: The Case of Brazil."
We obtained a copy of the report for you here.
Ouch. The Committee's report goes into the details of the ongoing public clash, where Musk first accused Brazil's government of demanding censorship of prominent political and media figures without any explanation, in addition to gag orders imposed on X.
Looming large in the background of all this is Alexandre de Moraes, president of Brazil's Superior Electoral Court and Supreme Federal Court justice. More pertinently, a noted political rival of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who last year lost an election and contested it on the grounds of irregularities and unfairness.
And then, the new authorities in Brazil set out to (continue) doing their damnedest to make sure Bolsonaro and his supporters are silenced and discredited on social platforms. (Any similarity to election controversy in another country may or may not be coincidental).
The US House Committee's report provides some facts - it had access to 28 orders in Portuguese (originals) and English, and 23 more only in English, all issued by Moraes to X; plus, 37 orders from the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil.
The Committee's report spelled the essence out like this: "The Brazilian government is currently trying to force X and other social media companies to censor over 300 accounts."
And those include former President Bolsonaro's, that belongs to Federal Senate member Marcos do Val, and journalist Paulo Figueiredo Filho. There are others, including more journalists, radio stations, and legal experts and former judges.
As the report noted - "Government-directed censorship is not a problem isolated only to authoritarian governments in faraway lands; it is happening here in the United States."
And then, in case anyone missed the point being made here: "The Committee's and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government's findings of the Biden Administration's attacks on free speech reveal how the Biden Administration, like Brazil, has sought to silence their critics." | Some members of the British Parliament want an independent review to be done concerning the Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), following an investigation into its activities by privacy and civil liberties campaigner Big Brother Watch.
CDU is identified by the group as, in addition only to security/intelligence services, operating in "one of the most opaque ways in government." Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo welcomed the committee's initiative, but added that "the unit should be immediately suspended and subjected to a full investigation."
In the recommendations to the government issued by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS), CDU is additionally suspected of being insufficiently transparent and accountable, with "the appropriateness of its reach" also questioned. |  | | CDU was originally established in 2019 as part of DCMS to this past February get "transferred" to the newly formed Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The controversy around CDU has to do with the unit "working" with social media during the pandemic in a bid to censor opponents of Covid restrictions and vaccine mandates expressed by UK citizens.
Among those citizens were ex-ministers and elected officials, such as Conservative PM David Davis who was skeptical of what's known as "modeling" concerning Covid - supposed to describe an epidemic using population movement data.
The way CDU and social platforms, the biggest ones like Google and Meta among them, are accused of collaborating on censorship included deletion of posts and hiding of accounts.
The Committee's report, urging an independent review of CDU's activities and strategy wants the government to present the results to the parliament within 12 months.
Previously, some other Conservative MPs, like Paul Scully, defended CDU, claiming that instead of targeting individuals it was monitoring "narratives and trends" around what it chose to consider misinformation and manipulation of online "information environment."
It's not clear how such incidents might happen if CDU's activities are structured as Scully presented them - but he did add that "the content reviewed may incidentally include personal data."
Still, this MP and former junior minister assured the public CDU is not "some big, shady intelligence unit."
Perhaps it's just small and shady, cynics might wonder.
Others who have spoken about what CDU does, like Sarah Connolly who actually headed the unit during the pandemic, earlier described "passing information over" to platforms with the hope of "the swift takedown" of content as its key purpose. | | Thanks for reading,
Reclaim The Net
| | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment