Censorship

The White House will not sign an international call to combat online extremism brokered between French and New Zealand officials and top social media companies, amid US concerns that it clashes with constitutional protections for free speech. The decision comes as world leaders prepare to announce the so-called “Christchurch call to action” on May 15, an effort named after the New Zealand city where a shooter attacked two mosques in an attack inspired by online hate and broadcast on social media sites.

Heralded as the world’s toughest watchdog of Silicon Valley technology giants, Europe has clamped down on violent content, hate speech and misinformation online through a thicket of new laws and regulations over the past five years. Now there are questions about whether the region is going too far, with the rules leading to accusations of censorship and potentially providing cover to some governments to stifle dissent.

We are a coalition of 103 civil liberties, civil rights, corporate responsibility, faith-based, human rights, immigrant rights, journalism, media, privacy, and government transparency organizations, legal service providers, and trade associations. We write to express our deep concern with reports of surveillance and targeting of activists, journalists, and lawyers by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The 2019 World Press Freedom Index Compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shows how hatred of journalists has degenerated into violence, contributing to an increase in fear.

In the aftermath of [recent horrific mass shootings], some of the responses from internet companies include ideas that point in a disturbing direction: toward increasingly centralized and opaque censorship of the global internet. Facebook, for example, describes plans for an expanded role for the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, or GIFCT.

A global reckoning around the future of the internet is underway as autocratic regimes look to censor the internet in their countries, and races to develop new internet technologies, such as blockchain and 5G, heat up between the US and China. The next version of the internet could be split between countries that embrace an open web and isolationists that don't. It could also be fractured by different technologies that could fundamentally change the interconnected nature of the network and limit who can do business where.

A new executive order from the White House will aim to make federal research funding for colleges and universities contingent on their support for “free speech,” President Donald Trump said. The announcement, during Trump’s address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, appeared to target complaints by some university critics that institutions of higher education stifle right-wing viewpoints.

At the midpoint of his term, there remains little question that President Donald Trump exerts an influence on American politics that is straining our core values and testing the stability of our constitutional system. No president in living memory has shown less respect for its tenets, norms, and principles. President Trump has assailed essential institutions and traditions including the separation of powers, a free press, an independent judiciary, the impartial delivery of justice, safeguards against corruption, and most disturbingly, the legitimacy of elections.

An elected official in Virginia violated the First Amendment when she temporarily blocked a constituent on Facebook, a federal appeals court ruled Jan 7, in a novel case with implications for how government officials nationwide interact with constituents on social media. The unanimous ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit is the first from an appeals court to answer the question of whether free speech protections prevent public officials from barring critics from their social media feeds. The 42-page opinion addresses the Facebook page of Phyllis J.

In a year-end report, the Committee to Protect Journalists counted 53 journalists killed between Jan 1 and Dec 14, including 34 targeted in reprisal for their work — nearly double the 18 such murders it recorded in 2017. The growing number of journalists jailed or attacked on that pretext [of dissemintating "false" or "fake" news] is one illustration of the deleterious influence that President Donald Trump has had on press freedom globally. His labeling of the US media as the “enemy of the people” and charges of “fake news” have been imitated by regimes around the world.