#censorshipcontrol

#censorshipcontrol

66% of internet users live where political or social sites are blocked, and 78% are in countries where people have been arrested for online posts. New social media regulations have emerged in dozens of countries in the past year alone.

When Guatemalan computer scientist Luis von Ahn first proposed the idea of "games with a purpose" (GWAPs) in 2004, his goal was to harness human brainpower so that computers could learn from it. His idea was simple: Get humans to solve tasks that are trivial to us but difficult for computers back then, like labeling images, transcribing text or classifying data.

The new amendments empower police to require a person under investigation suspected of endangering national security to provide any password or decryption method for electronic devices and to provide the police any reasonable and necessary information or assistance.

Recent revelations from news agency Reuters that the US is "developing an online portal that will enable people in Europe and elsewhere to see content banned by their governments including hate speech and terrorist propaganda," as a method to counter what it sees as excessive censorship in other parts of the world is troubling to the EU. Even if the plans appear to have been delayed and detail is thin, the US position is clear.

Managed by the US state department and the US Agency for Global Media, the programme broadly called Internet Freedom funds small groups all over the world, from Iran to China to the Philippines, who built grassroots technologies to evade internet controls imposed by governments. It has dispensed well over $500m (370m) in the past decade, according to an analysis by the Guardian, including $94m in 2024.

Around 2013 in Taiwan's context, when Facebook started to take over the digital ecosystem in Taiwan, many local independent bulletin boards that had been formed for sexual minorities were shut down because they had no income from advertisements, and people were pushed into mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Meta, whatever, Twitter now X where sexual expression was usually reported or flagged.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has rounded up several of these counter surveillance projects, and perhaps unsurprisingly many of these have to do with Flock, best known for its automated license plate reader (ALPR). Flock operates the largest network of surveillance cameras in America, and, while it has contracts with thousands of police departments and municipalities across the US, sometimes ICE gains access to this footage, according to US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and those who have looked into Flock's misuse.

"Don't play Russian roulette with [this man's] life," Jon told lead DHS prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, in the email. "Err on the side of caution. There's a reason the US government along with many other governments don't recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency." Five hours later, per WaPo, Jon received a response - not from Dernbach or the DHS, but from Google.