Mark Steyn on Free Speech at the IPA from Institute of Public Affairs on Vimeo. Rupert Murdoch’s Andrew Bolt a free speech champion? I fear so. See here, here and here. Of course, it doesn’t help that Bolt made so many mistakes in his piece against Aboriginal Australians, seemingly designed to denigrate them. Should Western…
Showing all posts tagged censorship
When the state wants to read my tweets if I slam official view
Of course, such plans are framed as a simple desire to be able to respond to questions or problems. And that may be sometimes true. But we should always be skeptical of major bodies looking to expand an ability to spy on average citizens: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) has invited companies…
Anyone can make a revolution (or can they?)
The upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas is taking place at the Sydney Opera House in October. Feel threatened. I’m involved in the following event on 2 October at 6pm: In Egypt and Tunisia we have seen ordinary people come together to claim democracy and human rights in the face of oppressive regimes, with Twitter and…
Why was Al-Jazeera offering to censor content for the US?
This Wikileaks cable from October 2005 displays a concerning enthusiasm from Al Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Khanfar to censor content following US concerns over “disturbing” material: Summary: PAO met 10/19 with Al Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Khanfar to discuss the latest DIA report on Al Jazeera and disturbing Al Jazeera website content. Khanfar is preparing…
Guess who was helping Gaddafi stay in power?
The role of Western companies helping repressive regimes monitoring their citizens is only getting worse, as I document in my book The Blogging Revolution. This week the Wall Street Journal secured a cracking exclusive about Libya and the fine, upstanding people helping Gaddafi remain thuggish: On the ground floor of a six-story building here, agents…
Arab revolutions ain’t all about Wikileaks or censorship but damn fine bravery
Despite what Wikileaks may claim – the release of US embassy cables undeniably revealed the depravity of the relationship between Washington and various dictators but they hardly sparked the Arab Spring – social media played a part in the uprisings and subsequent changes. As I argue in the recently released and updated edition of my…
Lesson from London riots; don’t trust governments to react rationally online
Evidence for the prosecution: Analysis of more than 2.5m Twitter messages relating to the riots in England has cast doubt on the rationale behind government proposals to ban people from social networks or shut down their websites in times of civil unrest. A preliminary study of a database of riot-related tweets, compiled by the Guardian,…
Should we trust tech companies talking about censoring speech?
The complete lack of transparency with telecommunication firms deciding with the assistance of government if and when calls or web connections should be stopped or censored is highly disturbing. Who wants a faceless firm making such decisions? From yesterday’s UK Observer: After the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and this summer’s looting in England,…
Privacy and censorship in the online world are foreign concepts?
I was recently spoke in Sydney at the University of New South Wales at the conference of the Australian Law Students’ Association on the issues of privacy and censorship in Australia and globally. Here’s extracts from that event (though my comments here are very brief and rest assured I said many other things, including citizens…