Europe warns of Turkey Internet censorship

[drunkenshoe]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/worl ... p/5252253/

ISTANBUL — Europe is voicing concern Thursday over new Turkish legislation that would tighten government controls over the Internet.

Turkey's Parliament on Wednesday approved measures allowing the government to block websites without seeking permission from a court and require Internet providers to keep records on Web users' activities for two years for authorities.

Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, said on Twitter Thursday that the legislation is a step back in an "already suffocating environment for media freedom."

Many people in Turkey say the law, which must still be signed by the president, is intended to silence dissent.

"One man can order a website to be closed, it's really anti-democratic," said lawyer Serhat Koc, an activist with Turkey's Pirate Party, which has been campaigning against the bill.

Turkey's Parliament approved the law late Wednesday with a show of hands. Critics believe the law is part of a surveillance network to tamp down anti-government protests. Last month, police violently dispersed hundreds of demonstrators who rallied in Istanbul, Ankara and the coastal city of Izmir. Protesters flew banners and chanted slogans that brought a crackdown by riot police.

TOP 10: Countries with most controls on Internet

The bill was unveiled in December, a day after family members of top politicians were implicated in a wide-ranging corruption probe targeting the prime minister's family and inner political circle. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has so far been able to contain the probe by sacking hundreds of prosecutors and judges and reassigning thousands of police, saying his government is the victim of an international plot to undermine Turkey's world standing.

But in recent weeks videotapes and audio recordings from wiretaps have surfaced online that implicate Erdogan and his associates in shady dealings with business groups.

Geoffrey King, internet advocacy coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said his group is "disappointed" that Turkey has taken a step that gives the government broad censorship powers to prevent news of such scandals from being made public.

"Clearly if these amendments were to pass they would be very useful in clamping down on embarrassing information coming out," he said.

"We will remain vigilant about its application to the press and its effect on the press in Turkey," King said. "The Internet has the potential to be the greatest enabler of human expression. It also has the potential to be the greatest tool of social control."

So far Washington has refrained from criticizing its ally directly but has registered concern about Internet freedom.

"As the Turkish government evaluates its approach to Internet freedom, we hope the highest standards of openness and free expression will be protected," said State Department spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff in comments published on CPJ's website.

The law requires service providers to take down objectionable content within four hours and any page found in violation by the country's telecom authority or face fines up to $44,500. It would also close loopholes and technical work-arounds that are popular in a country that has already blocked an estimated 40,000 sites since 2007.

"This is not just about blocking access to certain types of content. They are trying to build up a new infrastructure to surveil people and collect data about all Internet users from Turkey," said Yaman Akdeniz, law professor at Istanbul's Bilgi University. "This obviously has serious implications, unprecedented I would say."

Turkey's current laws are designed to protect minors from harmful content. Many of the sites blocked are pornographic but some alternative media outlets and video sharing sites have also been banned.

Business groups have also weighed in. The Turkish Industry and Business Association penned a letter this week to the Family and Social Policies Ministry that proposed the bill. It warned that the restrictions would undermine investment and undermine the separation of powers by allowing the executive to censor content at will.

Turkey is a very wired country. It has one of the highest Internet usage rates in Europe with about 33 million registered Facebook accounts in a country of about 76 million people.

With government pressure on traditional media outlets like newspapers and television stations well-documented, many people go online to share and receive news.

"The only reliable information to obtain for the Turkish people and people living in Turkey is through social media and alternative news sites," Akdeniz said. "Facebook groups and Twitter have become crucially important for many people including myself."

That has led top politicians like Erdogan to condemn sites like Twitter as a tool used for extremists. During the height of the Gezi Park protests last June the prime minister declared, "To me, social media is the worst menace to society."

But rather than crack down on social media Erdogan's AK Party initially chose to fight fire with fire. This summer the party reportedly enlisted around 6,000 online volunteers to boost its presence online.

But that has apparently not been enough, said Akdeniz, and the government may resort to cruder methods to control the online sphere.

"There are other countries like Iran, Syria and China that try to deploy similar controls and unfortunately Turkey is moving toward that direction," he said.

[GrinningYMIR]

Censorship is getting more prevalent, it worries me that it's getting bigger in turkey


Hopefully you guys can avoid Puritan censorship

[Shol'va]

Internet censorship? What could possibly go wrong :P
It's good to see outside pressure placed on the administration, but the government must also face pressure from its own people.
This sort of thing is more or less a direct result of the religiously fundamental views that pervade that society, am I wrong?

PS: Anonymous is/is going to have a field day with this one. I've been following this development for a while.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

So what happens if AF gets placed on the naughty sites list Shoe? Perhaps we should all pray for the pm just to stay on the safe side.

[Shol'va]

There are ways around censorship, but of course ideally we shouldn't get to a place where we have to actually have those conversations.
Not even the great firewall of China can stop "illicit" traffic with complete success and I seriously doubt Turkey has a superior technological advantage in that regard.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

More important is the genie is already out of the bottle. To little to late I think is the problem with the censorship crowd. It's like trying to teach people how to unlearn how to read.

[Jason78]

Tor.

[Jason78]

But then who would I annoy with one line posts?

[Shol'va]

drunkenshoe, can you give some specific examples of this self-censorship that you are referring to?

The first thing about this is the 'language'. As the names of the concepts are completely crippled -anarchism, socialism, liberalism, democrat, nationalists...etc- and re-defined to conform the system

What is the current standing re-definition of these terms in the United States? In other words, how do every day Americans conceptualize them and how are they wrong, or in what sense are they crippled?

anything that is real and supposedly 'harmful' for the US state is already taken as "A loonie job, conspiracy, so unbelievably crazy"

That's an interesting thought. Can you give a recent example that illustrates how this is happening?

people are so much more scared from the state and it's power in US than in second-third world countries.

What makes you say that? How is this fear evident and how does it manifest itself? What second world countries did you have in mind when you were making this comparison?

[Shol'va]

One US publication is calling out another. What you've pointed out is that news are, at times, distorted. We all know this. But I think, without intending to, you also pointed out a bigger, positive, thing. That in this country people call each other out on their bullshit.
So the take away is that dialogue is alive and well. Thanks to Salon uncovering that piece of information, now we know better.
So that wasn't a very good example of your point. A good example would have been if that was not posted anywhere in the news at all.

What about the rest of my post?

[Shol'va]

The religious article you posted while I was still writing my response.
You are being selective about what articles you present. There are a lot of articles ridiculing Christians and their crimes, both in the news and on social sites.
Evidence of harm by religion is a Facebook group that has a lot of links to such articles in the press here.

[Shol'va]

Or the information like the Lancet research concerning the body count in Iraq invasion. You cannot find it in anywhere.

But you have not shown that it was done maliciously, instead of by incompetence. And you are incorrect, it has, as of now, been picked up by American news sites as well.
Google "lancet study Iraq body count".
It's been in the news here even in 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01442.html

[AllPurposeAtheist]

They rely on willful ignorance and a heavy dose of flat out laziness on the part of the public, but this is also true of religiospeek feeding bullshit to a public all to eager to eat it up if it fits their preconditioned world view of the magic man in the sky who will always make "good" triumph over "evil" and in the case above the US, all "good christians" triumph over "evil Iran" so any and every lie is justified.

[Shol'va]

Exactly APA!

[Shol'va]

Sweeping generalizations are utterly useless in any conversation drunkenshoe and you are confusing censorship with political bias. You said Americans perfected censorship and as an example you have one american publication exposing another American publication. So the conclusion is SOME news sources engage in political bias. This is true everywhere in the world.
I'll be back later with some specific examples of selective bias. In the mean time if you would not mind giving examples of the rest of the sweeping generalizations and assertions you made, that would be great