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Dec 21, 2010

WikiLeaks, Amazon and the new threat to internet speech

 

From: Justice Freedom <justice_freedom@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:14 PM
 


 

Dan's comment:  Important ideas in this excellent commentary by Rebecca MacKinnon, bearing close reading.  Also see readers' comments at bottom.
 
excerpts from below commentary
The future of freedom in the internet age may well depend on whether we the people can succeed in holding companies that now act as arbiters of the public discourse accountable to the public interest.
_________
 
Let's hope that there will always be other companies willing to stand up for our rights as enshrined both in the U.S. Constitution and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- and by extension their right to do business with us.
________
 
. . . affect the ability of citizens to carry out informed debate on important matters of public concern
__________
 
In 2008, Lieberman wrote to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, demanding immediate removal of "content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations from YouTube." While YouTube did remove a few videos that violated community guidelines against violence and hate speech, it refused to remove most of them.
 
Google's lawyers determined that the material Lieberman wanted removed, while upsetting to many Americans, was clearly protected under the First Amendment. "While we respect and understand [Lieberman's] views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view," Schmidt wrote in his response.
He continued: "We believe YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate, we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds."
__________________________
 
WikiLeaks, Amazon and the new threat to internet speech
By Rebecca MacKinnon, Special to CNN
December 3, 2010
 
Editor's note: Rebecca MacKinnon is a Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, co-founder of the international bloggers' network Global Voices Online and a founding member of the Global Network Initiative. Her book, "Consent of the Networked," will be published late next year by Basic Books.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Rebecca MacKinnon says many differ on whether media should publish WikiLeaks cables

* What's troubling, she says, is that Sen. Joe Lieberman can get Amazon to dump it from server

* She asks: What are private sector's responsibilities to prevent erosion of free speech?

* Writer: Future of free speech on internet turns on companies' accountability to public interest

(CNN) -- In the physical world, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is a wanted man. In the virtual world, his website is under attack and on the run.

There isn't much question that the person who obtained the WikiLeaks cables from a classified U.S. government network broke U.S. law and should expect to face the consequences. The legal rights of a website that publishes material acquired from that person, however, are much more controversial.

There are many prominent Americans -- and a great many ordinary Americans -- who have made their views clear over the past week that WikiLeaks' "cablegate" website should not be considered constitutionally protected speech. Others, however, believe equally strongly that now that the material is out, news media and website owners have the right to publish the material.

What is troubling and dangerous is that in the internet age, public discourse increasingly depends on digital spaces created, owned and operated by private companies. The result is that one politician has more power than ever to shut down controversial speech unilaterally with one phone call.

After suffering aggressive cyber attacks last weekend, Assange removed his "cablegate" site from servers in Sweden and purchased a new home for it on Amazon's web hosting service. On Tuesday, Amazon talked on the phone with the office of Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate's committee on homeland security.

Shortly thereafter, Amazon booted WikiLeaks. The senator responded with a statement: "I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on WikiLeaks' previous publication of classified material. The company's decision to cut off WikiLeaks now is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material."

This is not the first time Lieberman has demanded that an American internet company take down controversial material. Last time, the outcome was different.

In 2008, Lieberman wrote to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, demanding immediate removal of "content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations from YouTube." While YouTube did remove a few videos that violated community guidelines against violence and hate speech, it refused to remove most of them.

Google's lawyers determined that the material Lieberman wanted removed, while upsetting to many Americans, was clearly protected under the First Amendment. "While we respect and understand [Lieberman's] views, YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone's right to express unpopular points of view," Schmidt wrote in his response.

He continued: "We believe YouTube is a richer and more relevant platform for users precisely because it hosts a diverse range of views, and rather than stifle debate, we allow our users to view all acceptable content and make up their own minds."

The New York Times editorial page chimed in: "While it is fortunate that Mr. Lieberman does not have the power to tell YouTube that it must remove videos, it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech."

Amazon's dumping of WikiLeaks at one senator's request brings into stark relief one of the core problems Americans have grappled with since before our country even existed: Where is the right balance between security, on one hand, and civil liberties, on the other?

We have always disagreed passionately. Much of American politics and a large number of constitutional battles center on this question. One might even argue that our political and legal systems are designed to enable this argument to continue indefinitely as new technologies and challenges arise.

But the WikiLeaks Amazon case also highlights a new problem for American democracy -- and ultimately for the future of freedom and democracy more globally. A substantial if not critical amount of our political discourse has moved into the digital realm. This realm is largely made up of virtual spaces that are created, owned and operated by the private sector.

As far as the law is concerned, Amazon is off the hook. Speech within the kingdom of Amazonia -- run by its sovereign Jeff Bezos and his board of directors with help from the wise counsel and judgment of the company's executives -- is not protected in the same way that speech is constitutionally protected in America's public spaces.

The law gives Amazon the right to set its own rules.

The company's terms of service clearly state that it "reserves the right to refuse service, terminate accounts, remove or edit content in its sole discretion." By clicking "agree," the customer has legally consented to "represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content," and that said content "will not cause injury to any person or entity."

Given that citizens are increasingly dependent on privately-owned spaces for our politics and public discourse, however, the fight over how speech should be governed in a democracy is focused increasingly on questions of how private companies should or shouldn't control speech conducted on and across their networks and platforms.

We are facing new questions on which Americans have no clear consensus, and which were not covered in civics class: How will decisions made by private internet and telecommunications companies about what content they will or won't allow affect the ability of citizens to carry out informed debate on important matters of public concern? What are the private sector's obligations and responsibilities to prevent the erosion of democracy?

While Amazon was within its legal rights, the company has nonetheless sent a clear signal to its users: If you engage in controversial speech that some individual members of the U.S. government don't like -- even if there is a strong case to be made that your speech is constitutionally protected -- Amazon is going to dump you at the first sign of trouble.

Let's hope that there will always be other companies willing to stand up for our rights as enshrined both in the U.S. Constitution and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- and by extension their right to do business with us.

The future of freedom in the internet age may well depend on whether we the people can succeed in holding companies that now act as arbiters of the public discourse accountable to the public interest.

________________

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rebecca MacKinnon.

**************************

COMMENTS on above:
 
Dan0Underhil
Julian Assange and wikileaks are doing the work that our news media and our
law enforcement should have been doing all along. Because our news media and
our law enforcement agencies are presently owned and operated by the same
corporate gangsters that make up the "military industrial complex" that
President Eisenhower warned us about, these tasks need to be taken on by
someone outside those organizations if we are ever to get our beloved
democratic republic back.
Besides, shouldn't they nail Dick Chaney for the Valerie Plame case first? The difference is that Dick Chaney's leak was in service to his corporate masters and wikileaks is in service of free and open democracy.
___________________
bbqbearII
the first error was the government not properly protecting information they were charged with and were paid by the taxpayers to protect.. the guilt starts with them.
__________
WilliamOP
The private company hosting the content has the right to refuse the content. Plain and simple, and there is no "First Amendment" at issue. First Amendment becomes an issue when the content provider, or even the hosting service, is criminally charged for same
[dan's comment: This is a lesser truth.]
 
 
________________________________________
 
-- It is not illegal to expose an illegal war. Support Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks !!
 
-- An asylum for the sane would be empty in America. - George Bernard Shaw
 
-- It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class — except congress.
- Mark Twain
 
-- 30 million christianist fundamentalists (probably the largest voting bloc in the world) voted for bush, war and occupation in 2004, about as far away from a Christian approach to other people as it is possible to get. As Chris Hedges says, "The gospels are the one book the [christianist] fundamentalists know nothing about."
 
— The Palestinian intifada is a war of national liberation. We Israelis enthusiastically chose to become a colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities ... we established an apartheid regime.
- Michael Ben-Yair, Israeli attorney general in the1990s, quoted in The Guardian (U.K.), April 11, 2002
 
___________________________________
 
Daniel Stone
 

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PRESS RELEASE: World Jewish Congress calls on US authorities to pave way for quick extradition of suspected Nazi war criminal Peter Egner to Serbia

 

From: Roma Virtual Network <romale@zahav.net.il>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 4:49 PM

 

WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS + + + PRESS RELEASE + + + 21 DECEMBER 2010

Serbian extradition request to US for suspected Nazi war criminal
World Jewish Congress calls on authorities to pave way for quick extradition of Peter Egner to Serbia

NEW YORK - The president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Ronald S. Lauder, has called on courts and authorities in the United States to quickly pave the way for the extradition of the alleged Nazi war criminal Peter Egner, 88, to Serbia, where he is to stand trial on charges of genocide. "The accusations brought against Egner are so horrendous that no further time must be wasted.  Not only the Jewish community in Serbia, but Jews world-wide expect Nazi war criminals to be tried and brought to justice, irrespective of their age. These people may be frail, but so are many Holocaust survivors. Justice done belatedly is still better than justice not done at all," Lauder declared.

Egner is wanted in Belgrade on charges of participating in the killing of 17,000 civilians, mainly Jews, Roma and political opponents between 1941 and 1943, during the Nazi German occupation of then Yugoslavia. The Serbian government issued an international arrest warrant for Egner in April and filed an extradition motion with US authorities in November. Egner, an ethnic German born and raised in Yugoslavia, entered the United States in 1960 and gained US citizenship in 1966.

The Justice Department in Washington in 2008 asked a court to revoke his citizenship based on evidence of his role in an Einsatzgruppe, a mobile Nazi death squad that participated in the mass murder of more than 17,000 civilians, most of them Jewish, in Serbia in 1941 and 1942. Egner lives in a retirement community near Seattle. While Egner - an officer of the secret Nazi police Gestapo, and the SS - denied any knowledge of the Einsatzgruppe, the Justice Department cited German documents showing his role in the unit, whose members murdered prisoners by gassing them with carbon monoxide in specially designed 'gas vans'.

About the World Jewish Congress

The World Jewish Congress is the international organization representing Jewish communities in 92 countries around the world. The WJC serves as the diplomatic arm of the Jewish people to governments, parliaments and international organizations.

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Rabbi Cooper: "The Web is not a debating society. It's there for marketing and advertising."

 

Thought for the Day:  "The Web is not a debating society. It's there for marketing and advertising. We need to apply pre-Net rules: create a policy and stick to it."  -- Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in a presentation at the Virginia Bar Association Annual Meeting on January 14, 2000. 

--

Being happy–is it good for the Jews? "Before Professor Dershowitz accused me of being an anti-Semite (news to me), I was a happy person. Since then, I'm still a happy person". –Michael Santomauro

An antisemite condemns people for being Jews, I am not an antisemite.--Michael Santomauro

Most of us are mentally trapped to think Jewish. Actually, it is safe to say that virtually every mainstream publication or or other type of media organ is "nothing more than a screen to present chosen views." The great battle over the last century has been a battle for the mind of the Western peoples, i.e., non-Jewish Euros. The chosen won it by acquiring control over essentially the complete mainstream news, information, education and entertainment media of every type, and using that control to infuse and disseminate their message, agenda and worldview, their way of thinking, or rather the way they want us to think. Since at least the 1960s this campaign has been effectively complete. Since then they have shaped and controlled the minds of all but a seeming few of us in varying degree with almost no opposition or competition from any alternative worldview. So now most of us are mentally trapped in the box the chosen have made for us, which we have lived in all our lives. Only a few have managed to avoid it or escape it, or to even sometimes see outside of it, and so actually "think outside of the (Jewish) box." --Michael Santomauro

Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

E-mail me anything:
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

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Was It Google And Verizon Or The FCC That Just Screwed Us On Mobile Net Neutrality?

 

http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/21/verizon-google-fcc-net-neutrality/

Peace.
Michael Santomauro
@ 917-974-6367

What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

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The Legacy of Richard Holbrooke

 


Holbrooke was a Jewish racial supremacist. Here is, as Raimondo as
observed, his truest legacy: The Albanian-Kosovar trafficking in the
human organs of Christian prisoners, as documented by the Council of
Europe:

Attachment(s) from James Sanchez

2 of 2 File(s)



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Cooperation between the Shin Bet and the Palestinian security and intelligence

 




logoGrey.gif

  • Published 17:08 20.12.10
  • Latest update 17:08 20.12.10

Fatah asked Israel to help attack Hamas during Gaza coup, WikiLeaks cable shows

Document from 2007 quoted Shin Bet chief Diskin as saying Israel had 'established very good working relationship' with Abbas and that PA security in turn was sharing 'almost all its intelligence with Israel'.



Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wanted unprecedented help from Israel in attacking Hamas during the clashes just prior to the militant group's bloody coup of the Gaza Strip, according to a classified cable leaked by WikiLeaks on Monday.

In a cable dated June 13, 2007, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones wrote that Shin Bet security chief Yuval Diskin had told him in a meeting that Abbas' Fatah movement was "desperate, disorganized and demoralized" over the situation in the Gaza Strip.

The cable was released as the violent clashes between Fatah and Hamas were underway; three days after the meeting between Jones and Diskin on June 9, Hamas began seizing control of the coastal territory and within five days had displaced the Palestinian Authority government there.

Israel has "established a very good working relationship" with Abbas' forces, Diskin told Jones in their meeting. As Hamas was overrunning Gaza, Diskin said, some desperate Fatah leaders even wanted Israel to attack Hamas.

According to the cable, Diskin assumed in the early days of the clashes that Hamas was not yet strong enough to "completely destroy" Fatah's presence in the Gaza Strip. Hamas may be able to win the battles, Diskin said, but Fatah's response would be damaging.

Diskin told the American envoy that Hamas had managed to penetrate the echelons of Fatah's security forces, emphasized that Abbas' faction was suffering a leadership crisis and had put senior official Mahmoud Dahlan in charge of overseeing the situation in the coastal territory.

Dahlan was in effect  "trying to manage Fatah's security forces by remote control," said Diskin, adding: "We are not even sure where he is."

Jones emphasized in the cable that an aide to Diskin had surmised that Dahlan was in Cairo at the time; a few days later Diskin told Jones that Dahlan was in Amman.

Diskin told the American envoy that although Fatah was desperate, its leadership was behaving as would be expected of people faced with such a difficult situation.

He told Jones that Fatah had thus turned to Israel for help in attack Hamas, which he termed a new and unprecedented development in Jerusalem's relations with the Palestinian Authority.

"They are approaching a zero-sum situation, and yet they ask us to attack Hamas," Diskin said. "This is a new development. We have never seen this before. They are desperate."

Diskin is also cited opposing a U.S. proposal to supply ammunition and weapons to Fatah, fearful that Hamas might get its hands on them instead.

Diskin went on to share with Jones sensitive details relating to the cooperation between the Shin Bet and the Palestinian security and intelligence forces in the West Bank.

Palestinian security was sharing "almost all the intelligence that it collects" with Israel," Diskin told Jones.  "They understand that Israel's security is central to their
survival in the struggle with Hamas in the West Bank," he said, according to the cable.

Despite that revelation, Diskin issued critical words of Tawfiq Tirawi, the head of the Palestinian General Intelligence, calling him "psychopathic, cruel and dangerous."

The cable also exposes Diskin's concern that Abbas had begun to pose as a problem for Israel. "He's a paradox. He cannot function and do anything. Why is Fatah failing?
Because Abbas has become the 'good guy' whom everyone is trying to do everything for in order to keep him alive.

"He knows he is weak and that he has failed ... to rehabilitate Fatah. He did not start to take any action when he had the chance in 2004. Instead of choosing to be the leader for Fatah, he chose to be a national leader for all Palestinians," Diskin said, according to the cable.

A few days after the meeting with Diskin, when the clashes in Gaza had reached their peaks on June 12, Jones met Israel's then-Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin.

In the cable sent to Washington, Jones said that Yadlin had been quite satisfied with Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip.

If Hamas managed to take complete control then the Israel Defense Forces would be able to relate to Gaza as a hostile territory and stop looking at the militant group as an undiplomatic player, Yadlin apparently told Jones.

A few weeks later, Israel's cabinet indeed reached the decision to relate to Gaza as a hostile territory.

A year and a half before Israel took offensive of the Gaza Strip in Operation Cast Lead, Yadlin referred to the territory as the fourth most hostile place in the world – following Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

Gaza was lost for now, Yadlin said, adding that he had expected the clashes with Fatah since Hamas' victory in the January 2006 elections.
Yadlin also said that he would be surprised if Fatah could actually be victorious in battle with Hamas.

In response to a query from Jones, Yadlin said he would only begin to worry that Iran would move in to the Gaza Strip if a port was set up in the territory.

Jones wrote in the cable that he was surprised by Yadlin's comments on Gaza and by the calm way he seemed to be reacting to Hamas' takeover.

The ambassador referred to Yadlin's demeanor with regard to the situation as representing a change of stance within the Israel Defense Forces.

Yadlin's position went in tandem with that of IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi, Jones wrote, who also believed that the real threat against Israel was coming from the northern border.

The disclosure of the cable could seriously embarrass Abbas and his Fatah movement, which Hamas has always accused of collaborating with the Israelis.

An official with Abbas' government played down the information, saying "information-sharing between us and Israel is limited to field information that serves our security and the interest of our people." He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter with reporters.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said he was not surprised to hear about the cooperation.

"This is proof of what Hamas has said in the past, that there has been a division of labor between some elements of the former authority in Gaza and the Israeli occupation," Barhoum said. "The same situation is taking place right now in the West Bank as well."

The just-released memo is not the first to indicate cooperation between Israel and Abbas' West Bank loyalists.

A June 2009 diplomatic message cited Israel's defense minister as asking Fatah before Israel's January 2009 war in Gaza whether it wanted to assume control of the territory once Israel defeated Hamas.

Fatah rejected the offer, according to the memo from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. An Abbas aide denied there were any prewar consultations.

Abbas' international prestige is tied to the quest for a peace deal. Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and pelted southern Israel with thousands of rockets, maintains that nothing can be gained by negotiating with Israel.

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new essay by petras - Re-thinking imperialist theory - [1 Attachment]

 
[Attachment(s) from James Petras included below]

new essay by petras - Re-thinking imperialist theory - please acknowledge receipt of attached essay - jpetras

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Attachment(s) from James Petras

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A Talmud Ace Tackles Thorny Issue of Net Neutrality – The Jewish Daily Forward

 


Memo: Remember Rabbi Cooper of The Wiesenthal Center saying in 2000: 

"The Web is not a debating society. It's there for marketing and advertising. We need to apply pre-Net rules: create a policy and stick to it."

Well...he influenced this guy:

 

Excerpt:

Over the next few weeks, Genachowski will discuss the plan with associates and adversaries. He needs at least two votes from the four other commissioners at a meeting set for December 21. He may have to tweak his proposal before then, and his training in talmudic reasoning could come in handy during the process. "Not to stereotype Jewishness, but he's a questioner," Waldman said. "He likes to probe and discuss and argue. That's certainly part of Jewish tradition."







Peace.
Michael Santomauro 
@ 917-974-6367 

What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

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Rabbi Cooper Blames Columbine Massacre On Internet

 

"The Web is not a debating society. It's there for marketing and advertising. We need to apply pre-Net rules: create a policy and stick to it," said Rabbi Cooper. "The Wiesenthal Center is not looking to regulate the Internet, but it is important to put a crimp into hate sites. Americans have a right not to do business with those who promote hate."





Peace.
Michael Santomauro 
@ 917-974-6367 

What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

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