When Facebook's Terms Of Service Decide What Kind Of 'Speech' Is Okay, Activists Get Silenced

from the that's-a-problem,-isn't-it? dept

The Atlantic is covering the fact that Syrian loyalists have been able to abuse Facebook’s “abuse” policy to make various Syrian opposition Facebook pages disappear based on very questionable means. A number of activist pages have simply been wiped out, and even when the folks behind those pages appeal, the appeals get denied. Facebook has, effectively, wiped out much of the key information source for Syrian opposition activists. And this comes even as Facebook itself touted the fact that people in places like Syria were using Facebook to speak up and make themselves heard:

By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored.

Well, until Facebook deletes those very pages based on questionable reasons. An example is given of a photo of a man sitting in a chair with a young child on his lap. The man turns out to be an activist who was later killed — but for reasons known only to Facebook censors, the entire post was deleted by Facebook, claiming that it violates their policies.

While the caption notes that the guy was killed by “thugs” it’s hard to see how that violates Facebook’s policies. This gets at a point that we’ve been concerned about for quite some time. When you rely on someone else’s platform for your speech, you’re entirely at the mercy of their terms of service. People use Facebook because it’s easy to connect with others and build communities, and that has value, but you’re risking having that speech disappeared.

This is why it’s often important for people to have platforms that they themselves control — though even then there are points of weakness and attack. You can host your own site, but people will go after upstream providers, including hosting companies and registrars. And service providers who have more open policies get hounded into creating “abuse” policies that appear to make sense at first… even though those abuse policies themselves are open to abuse.

For example, there were plenty of really good reasons why Twitter beefed up its abuse police last year, after a bunch of people had very legitimate complaints about how they were dealing with incredibly abusive behavior on Twitter. But, of course, it’s that kind of “abuse policy” that itself is now being abused by those in Syria seeking to stifle dissent.

And that’s where this gets so tricky. When we see people use these platforms in such abusive ways, it’s quite natural to want to see policies in place that let those abusive actions be stopped and taken down. But with such a process in place, you’re almost guaranteeing that it will be abused as well, and legitimate speech — such as that of these Syrian activists — gets removed and deleted (including important historical documentation and discussions that are now gone forever).

Filed Under: activism, censorship, free speech, social media, syria
Companies: facebook

United States Sanctions On Exporting Open Online Learning Courses Are Completely Backwards

from the aiding-the-enemy dept

Between Syria, Cuba, Iran and Sudan, Americans bothering to pay attention to the world around them are becoming increasingly familiar with how we sanction other countries and the intricacies of those sanctions. The intersection of sanctions and technology tend to revolve around the export of hardware, software, and services to nations with regimes we don’t particularly care for. All of these sanctions are typically designed to achieve one or both of the following goals: altering the behavior of the regime in question and/or encouraging the people of that nation to rise up against the regime by making everyone completely miserable.

With that in mind, we can now conclusively say that at least some of the tech sanctions levied against some countries are completely useless and should be done away with, namely those that intermittently punish the people of Syria, Iran, Cuba and Sudan, preventing their people from accessing open education platforms.

Coursera, which according to its site aims “to change the world by educating millions of people by offering classes from top universities and professors online for free,” is now subjected to a recent directive from the US federal government that has forced some MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) providers to block access for users in sanctioned countries such as Iran and Cuba. Coursera explains the change in its student support center:

“The interpretation of export control regulations as they related to MOOCs was unclear for a period of time, and Coursera had been operating under one interpretation of the law. Recently, Coursera received a clear answer indicating that certain aspects of the Coursera MOOC experience are considered ‘services’ (and all services are highly restricted by export controls). While many students from these countries were previously able to access Coursera, this change means that we will no longer be able to provide students in sanctioned countries with access to Coursera moving forward.”

While updates to this post suggest that connectivity to Syrians has been reestablished, that isn’t so with regard to countries like Iran, Cuba or Sudan. Examine for a moment the practical application of this kind of sanctioning. The US has identified a regime we do not like, which will almost by definition be relatively well-educated, affluent, and powerful. That regime oppresses its people. To combat this, part of our sanctions policy is designed to prevent the oppressed people from accessing educational services that would offer a ladder towards the educational standards enjoyed by the offending regime. Knowledge is power, of course, and the ability to learn about the world outside of the pens in which these countries have placed their own people is a tool that could be used to encourage change in these countries. Don’t take that from me, take it from the governments in those nations which are quite busy censoring the internet out of fear of their people becoming more educated. And now the US is essentially joining the censoring party, too.

In September 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation called on the US to lift all restrictions “that deny citizens access to vital communications tools.” But the US has continued its piecemeal approach, going back and forth between blocking new ranges of transactions to allowing the export of certain services.

“These sorts of export restrictions are overbroad and contain elements which have no effect on the Syrian regime, while preventing Syrian citizens from accessing a wealth of tools that are available to their activist counterparts in neighboring countries and around the world,” EFF stated.

Likewise in Iran, Cuba, and Sudan. A common complaint one sometimes gets from peace activists is that sanctions should be lifted because they don’t hurt the regime, only the innocent civilians. That complaint is usually moot, because often times the entire point is to hurt the citizens to breed unrest building towards revolution. But in this case, the harm is repressing the capacity for change, and therefore serves no purpose. Even beyond the humanist concept of exporting information and education as a simple matter of human rights, these sanctions can only have the opposite effect of their intention.

Fortunately, Coursera appears to have a genuine interest in spreading education and, as they did with the Syrian issue, appear to want to work with the US government to get around these outdated sanctions.

Coursera ended the announcement of the changes that prevent access to their courses in sanctioned countries with the following note: “We value our global community of users and sincerely regret the need to take this action. Please know that Coursera is currently working very closely with the U.S. Department of State and Office of Foreign Asset Control to secure the necessary permissions to reinstate site access for users in sanctioned countries.”

If the US government has any interest in their sanctioning policies beyond using them as some kind of penis-measuring contest, they’ll act quickly to give Coursera the ability to export education to the nations of oppressed people, otherwise known as the places where it is most sorely needed.

Filed Under: cuba, iran, moocs, online learning, sanctions, sudan, syria, us
Companies: coursera

Oil Traders Misread Tweet, Make Oil Prices Shoot Up

from the read-slower dept

There have been plenty of complaints about people who jump to conclusions too quickly online, but apparently at times that can actually have a material impact on things. Earlier today, the Israeli Defense Forces (who have been quite active on Twitter) put out a tweet commemorating the famed Yom Kippur war of 1973, in which Israel bombed Syria:

Oct. 10 #YomKippur73: Israel Air Force bombards airports in Syria to prevent Soviet weapons reaching the Syrian Army http://t.co/tKnMzYjgFF

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) October 10, 2013

The tweet may have been somewhat ill-timed, and poorly thought-out, given the current “heightened tensions” with Syria. Either way, apparently some oil traders either skipped over or didn’t understand the hashtag reference to “YomKippur73” (and the reference to the Soviet Union — a country that hasn’t existed in decades) and interpreted the tweet to mean that Israel was bombing Syria today. And, in response they started bidding up the price of oil. Because twitchy commodities dealers apparently do their pricing based on tweets.

Of course, the article notes that traders eventually realized their mistake… but the price of oil stayed up, rising over a dollar from $110.40 a barrel to $111.50 a barrel, and then continuing to rise a bit (though more slowly) after the mistake was understood. Isn’t it great that key pieces of the global economy can change based on some people totally misreading a tweet? Makes me feel so comfortable about the state of the world today.

Filed Under: israel, misreading, oil prices, reading comprehension, syria, twitter

Despite Growing Evidence of NSA's Omnipresence, State Dept. Hands Off 'Anti-Surveillance' Tech To Syrian Rebels

from the it's-the-thought-that-counts,-I-guess... dept

The government, at least some part of it, is out there trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, a very powerful and influential part of the government is currently entangled in a few decades’ worth of doing the wrong thing. DJ Pangburn, writing for Vice, details the “stark irony” of the government (namely, the State Dept.) handing off “anti-surveillance” technology to Syrian rebels, as if completely unaware of the NSA’s globetrotting surveillance efforts and attacks on anything that might keep data out of its hands.

Now, the US State Department, through the Office of Syrian Opposition Support (OSOS), is once again publicly touting its delivery of hardware and software solutions to Syrian rebels. In total, $25 million is being dumped into the Syrian revolution for this purpose via the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization. State Department Internet Freedom Grants are also doled out to software developers interested in helping dissidents worldwide. And, according to Time magazine, the US is even teaching dissidents communication security by way of non-profits such as the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and Freedom House…

The irony of the US government’s anti-surveillance efforts in Syria, as it defends its NSA surveillance programs in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s leaks, should not be lost on anyone. But, hell, maybe we should be encouraged that at least some of the world’s population should be free of Big Brother’s prying eyes.

The government is too cursed with a career bureaucrat’s lack of self-awareness to recognize the irony of its efforts. All that matters is that the paperwork’s in order. “Snoop-proof” tech is being requisitioned with the left hand while the right hand installs backdoors before it’s boxed up and shipped. The dissonance of this act would be jarring, except for the fact that the president himself claims he’s getting most of his NSA info secondhand — from the press rather than from security briefings. The government strives to be all things to all people but is prevented from rising above “useless” by the counterproductive desires of its internal masters.

The State Dept. wants to help but it’s handing off equipment that may prevent the rebels’ opposition from listening in, but won’t keep the NSA out. That’s the price you pay for foreign government handouts — you’re now allies and being friends means doing lots and lots of sharing. The US government wants those it supports to stay alive and healthy, and that means handing out technology that can’t be easily subverted by its enemies. But if our intelligence agencies have left open holes to sneak their tendrils in (zero day exploits, for instance), then no technology is truly secure — what can be exploited by us can be exploited by others.

Beyond these sharp contrasts lies a question that needs to at least be asked, never mind answered.

The main issue here is one of principle. How can the US government so publicly support anti-surveillance technologies abroad, while carrying out programs like the NSA’s PRISM on a global scale?

No one wants to answer this question. No one who has sincerely offered anti-surveillance tech in the past wants to hear the answer. The answer means the efforts were meaningless.

The government can publicly support anti-surveillance abroad because it’s listening to everyone. We’re Good Guy America, handing out anti-snooping tech to our “allies,” a relatively meaningless word as regime changes and shifting allegiances continually blur the line between friends and enemies. We’re not completely evil. We want our guys to win.

And so we give them pre-compromised tech and a hearty thumbs-up. If one warring faction can keep another locked out of the communication loop, good for them. It’s a small victory for that group in that location, entirely limited to that particular instance. Overall, it’s a loss. Those we support can thwart their enemies, but not us. Not if we’re handing out the tech. And if we listen in on our allies, who could blame us? After all, we set them up with tools, training and technology. The least they can do is allow us to pick up on the party line.

Filed Under: anti-surveillance tools, nsa, nsa surveillance, state department, syria

NSA Overreach May Have Contributed To UK's Unwillingness To Help With Syria

from the comes-back-to-hurt dept

As you may have heard, UK Prime Minister David Cameron dealt with something of an embarrassment when the UK Parliament voted down his Syria policy this week. There are a number of reasons why this likely happened, but an editorial in the Guardian notes that the latest NSA surveillance revelations may have had something to do with it:

There is no evidence that British public opinion has turned isolationist. There is plenty of evidence that it is fed up with the debilitating post 9/11 years of national sacrifice, with the humiliating excesses of US national security policy (not least its abuses of human rights and surveillance), with the unequal burden-sharing among allies and, above all, with the failures of policy.

Yes, there are a variety of issues buried in there, but key among them is the “excesses” of the US’ “national security policy” complete with excess surveillance. We’ve been pointing out for a while that these revelations could have wider impact and reverberate much further than US officials seem willing to admit, but this may be a small sign of that in action.

Filed Under: david cameron, fed up, fud, national security, nsa, nsa surveillance, overhype, overreach, syria, uk

Once Again, Will People Say That Reporters Revealing Details Of US Intelligence On Syria Be Called Criminals?

from the just-wondering dept

We’ve pointed out many times now how the old guard media seems to hate the new guard, in part because they’re not getting their stories the “old fashioned way” — which is buddying up to government officials and having them as “sources” where the reporter acts as an unofficial press officer for the government. Instead, when a Glenn Greenwald comes along, and gets information from Ed Snowden, he’s accused of criminal acts. People keep insisting that Snowden’s leaks revealed sources and methods, but so far they really haven’t.

Yet, when more detailed leaks come directly from more obvious government sources, no one bats an eye. We pointed out how clear this was in the past with Barbara Starr, the CNN reporter that Greenwald has jokingly referred to as “the Pentagon spokesperson who works at CNN.” She was among those who keep publishing reports from “inside sources” claiming that Snowden’s leaks were incredibly damaging.

And yet, here is the very same Barbara Starr, reporting from an anonymous “U.S. official,” details about what kinds of communications the US has intercepted by Syrian military leaders.

CNN has learned the United States has intercepts of conversations among top Syrian military officials discussing the chemical weapons attack after it took place last week, according to a U.S. official.

The intercepts form a key basis for the conclusion that the Syrian regime was behind the attack.

Right, so just as the US is pushing to intervene militarily in Syria, suddenly we get a “leak” revealing details of intelligence intercepts of Syrian leaders? Wouldn’t you think that’s the kind of thing that the government would most want to keep secret? But, of course, in this case, the hope is that this “leak” will help bolster the government’s case for bombing Syria, so it’s “okay.” Yet, how come we don’t hear the normal Snowden and Greenwald attackers calling for investigations into this “leak” and suggesting that Starr is a criminal?

Greg Mitchell has a succinct update of Richard Nixon’s famous “if a President does it, it’s not illegal” statement for the modern era. Apparently, “if a President leaks it, it’s not illegal.”

Filed Under: barbara starr, intelligence, journalism, leaks, nsa, reporting, sources, syria

The Flipside: Embracing Closed Gardens Like The Apple App Store Shows Just How Un-Free You Want To Be

from the open-and-free dept

Just the other day, I told you the story of some immature and racist apps in Google's Play store. In that post, I discussed how the kind of speech that offends is truly a barometer of exactly how free we want speech to be. It's one thing to embrace free speech that suits us, but it is every bit our duty to protect speech that does not suit us as well, because it is the ideal of free speech we are protecting, not the speech with which we disagree. The only other option, of course, is to become a society less permissible of speech. True, that society may yield a lower amount of speech the majority finds offensive, but what else gets caught in the drain-trap that shouldn't have? We remind one another all the time that private companies like Google aren't under obligation to the 1st Amendment and free speech, but we still have that ideal that permeates our society and so some of us choose to embrace the more open and permissible environments because we believe more information, data, and culture is always better and we'll deal with the annoyances that come along with it. Others choose to embrace the Apple App store, which gives you a wonderful idea of exactly what happens when speech and culture become more constricted.

Take one recent example: Apple's rejection of an gaming app based on the war in Syria, created to help educate others about exactly what is occurring there. The game was rejected based on Apple's not allowing apps that “solely target a specific race, culture, a real government or corporation or any other real entity”.

“This decision is a shame really as it makes it hard to talk about the real world,” said designer Tomas Rawlings.

“We had hoped that Apple would be more nuanced in how they applied this rule but we got a bit worried when it had been in submission for around two weeks without a decision – we then figured that because of the controversy of using the gaming medium to cover an ongoing war meant passing the game had become an issue for them.”

Rawlings insists there is nothing actually offensive in the game and notes that the response from those that got their hands on it has been generally positive. From what I can tell, the game is essentially a quick scenario decision making game told from the Syrian rebels point of view. It incorporates real world news items and events and allows the player to decide how to handle them. There's no deragatory name-calling. No over the top violence. But because they mention a “real government”, it's out.

And that's exactly the problem with a less permissible garden like Apple's app store. Sure, in Google's garden (or the wider open internet, for that matter) you will occasionally have to ignore a few weeds, but you get the full spectrum of flowers to enjoy. Apple's garden may have less weeds, but they have less flowers, and the choice over which flowers you see isn't up to you. That's not the system I want to embrace.

Filed Under: apps, closed, free speech, openness, syria
Companies: apple

Thank Joe Lieberman For YouTube Accidentally Censoring Key Syrian Watchdog's YouTube Channel

from the bet-that'll-stop-terror dept

Senator Joe Lieberman may finally be out of the Senate, but his “legacy” lives on. Over the years, we’ve noted that he’s regularly sought to censor technology that terrorists use, on the ridiculous theory that censorship somehow makes the terrorists disappear. One of his campaigns, way back in 2008, was to force YouTube to magically censor videos from terrorists. After putting a lot of public pressure on YouTube, the company caved. And… as a result of that, it recently shut down the video channel of an important Syrian watchdog organization which had been posting video evidence of atrocities occurring in that country. YouTube has apologized and reinstated the channel, but this is what happens when you encourage censorship. It is impossible not to have it lead to censoring important speech.

YouTube sent the Observatory an email on Sunday that said its channels “syrianhro” and “almrsd” had “violated the policy of the site by publishing shocking and offensive videos,” the Britain-based watchdog said.

The Observatory, which disseminates graphic videos on YouTube of atrocities from the bloody civil war the UN says has killed more than 60,000 people, condemned the closure.

“This is the second time in two months that the site administration has closed the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights channel,” it said in a statement, in reference specifically to almrsd.

Of course, if we’re to take Lieberman’s theory to its logical conclusion, so long as no one can see the atrocities in Syria, we can all pretend they haven’t happened, right?

Filed Under: activism, free speech, joe lieberman, syria, terrorism, videos, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

How Did Syria Turn Off The Internet… And What Other Countries Can Just Hit The Off Switch Like That?

from the government-cut-off dept

After the internet was almost entirely cut off in Syria last week, it came back over the weekend, and people are still puzzling through exactly what happened. The government keeps trying to blame others, such as attacks by those fighting against government forces. However, an analysis by Cloudflare has made it clear that it’s almost certain that the government was behind the shut down:

To begin, all connectivity to Syria, not just some regions, has been cut. The exclusive provider of Internet access in Syria is the state-run Syrian Telecommunications Establishment. Their network AS number is AS29386. The following network providers typically provide connectivity from Syria to the rest of the Internet: PCCW and Turk Telekom as the primary providers with Telecom Italia and TATA for additional capacity. When the outage happened, the BGP routes to Syrian IP space were all simultaneously withdrawn from all of Syria’s upstream providers. The effect of this is that networks were unable to route traffic to Syrian IP space, effectively cutting the country off the Internet.

Syria has 4 physical cables that connect it to the rest of the Internet. Three are undersea cables that land in the city of Tartous, Syria. The fourth is an over-land cable through Turkey. In order for a whole-country outage, all four of these cables would have had to been cut simultaneously. That is unlikely to have happened.

Furthermore, they note that the shutdown was quite systematic, suggesting “this was done through updates in router configurations, not through a physical failure or cable cut.”

Meanwhile, the folks at Renesys look into just how difficult it is to cut a country off from the internet, and whether other countries are at risk of the same sort of thing. Basically, it comes down to how decentralized the internet is in various countries — and in many countries there isn’t much decentralization. As Renesys notes, some countries have just one or two telcos who handle all internet traffic to and from the world. Those countries are easy to cut off. Renesys helpfully provides a map:

They then go into more details. Here are the two bullet points on the more at risk countries. If you want to learn about the somewhat more safe countries, click on over and read their full post (which has a much bigger discussion on all of this, which I highly recommend):

• If you have only 1 or 2 companies at your international frontier, we classify your country as being at severe risk of Internet disconnection. Those 61 countries include places like Syria, Tunisia, Algeria, Turkmenistan, Libya, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Myanmar, and Yemen.
• If you have fewer than 10 service providers at your international frontier, your country is probably exposed to some significant risk of Internet disconnection. Ten providers also seems to be the threshold below which one finds significant additional risks from infrastructure sharing — there may be a single cable, or a single physical-layer provider who actually owns most of the infrastructure on which the various providers offer their services. In this category, we place 72 countries, including Oman, Benin, Botswana, Rwanda, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uganda, Armenia, and Iran. Disconnection wouldn’t be trivial, but it wouldn’t be all that difficult. Egypt falls into this category as well; it took the Mubarak government several days to hunt down and kill the last connections, but in the end, the blackout succeeded.

As the internet is increasingly a global phenomenon, this kind of stuff matters a lot.

Filed Under: blocked, internet, syria

Syria Cut Off From The Internet Again

from the because-that-works-so-well dept

Earlier this summer, we wrote about Syria briefly deleting itself from the internet. We wondered about the logic behind this, seeing as other countries who attempted this — namely, Egypt and Libya — had regime change follow quite closely after such a decision. Furthermore, not too long ago, reports were that the Syrian government was trying to use the internet to get its own story out. Of course, a lot has happened in Syria in the interim. So perhaps views have changed.

Reports came out quickly today that the Syrian internet went almost entirely offline. Renesys, who reported this first, also provides some striking graphics on the situation:

I can’t imagine this strategy will be particularly successful.

Filed Under: internet, syria