Google: Surge in pressure from govts to DELETE CHUNKS of the web Governments, judges, cops and politicians are continuing to lobby Google to tear down online material critical of their operations, we're told. Today, the advertising giant said that, in the first six months of 2013, it received 3,846 demands from public officials to remove 24,737 personal blog posts, YouTube videos and other …
The Leveson enquiry here in the UK led to this Royal Charter which effectively puts the media under Government control.
However you look at it the power this gives to people who want to censor what we see and hear is enormous.
Cry baby celebrities, politicians and the like don't give a damn about the little people, they only have self interest in mind.
Freedom of speech is not for the little people.
I am hazarding a guess you were downvoted for the "leveson put media under govt control", though to be honest neither side was untarnished.
The scary thing here, is that unless freedom of speech *is* the law, suppression is simply a financial calculation. Hence, "sue if you dare". And of course it us "little people" that cannot possible hope to take on a $CORP or $GOVT.
I mentioned it before, that information on the web is disappearing or could be changed without anyone knowing.
How much worse will it get when there are forces actively trying to destroy unflattering/unprofitable/unwelcome information?
As some folks have commented elsewhere, "I used to think I was too paranoid, and now I think I am not paranoid enough..."
P.
I'll go the other way ...
... All Hail! The Mighty Champion of the People!
Fighting for your rights against The Man. Keeping your data out of government hands. Busy Doing No Evil, even while you sleep.
Your thanks will be sufficient*. No payment is required .
* and the data - obviously - keep sending us all of your lovely data, too!
;-)
Some things can be kept secret successfully. What can't be stopped are the means to share the secrets that slip out. From burning libraries and monasteries to destroying printing presses and confiscating newspapers and books, you can't stop the spread of information once it has become free. You can't resecret a secret.
What I find funny in all this is that political types are being grossly guilty of assuming if it's on the Internet it is real and anybody gives a shit, and that if it's not on the Internet it is gone forever. Christ, what a bunch of jackasses.
Agreed. But sufficient amounts of information are now concentrated in fewer and fewer hands and not on paper, the chances the secret getting out *in time* decreases.
Timing matters, and sometimes just delaying the information is enough "to get the fix in".
Did you never see "trading places"...;-)
P.
One can only presume it was submitting an accurate expense claim.
I agree people should not be able to publish lies but an important piece of information is missing, had the allegation been tested in court and is the removal backed by an injunction based on it being proven untrue. If not there is a big problem here. No person should have any more (or any less) protection here. If it is untrue the author should face consequences, if it is true then the authors right to free speech is paramount. We have courts to decide if it is true, if the author publishes prior to a judgement then they leave themselves open to a greater punishment. I have a deep suspicion regarding any unnamed mp getting to silence allegations about crimes, for all we know it could have been TB and Iraq War crimes.
So now this is adding up. Just a couple of weeks ago it came to light Google had saved between 3.3 and 5.3 million because of a "misunderstanding" with the government on what google had to pay for under market priced fuel for their planes
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-google-nasa-idUSBRE9BA1C320131211
So this is how our government is repaying google to sell us out. Wow, well played google. screw we tax payers even worse than paying NO taxes at all!
Rebelle» So this is how our government is repaying google to sell us out
Who exactly is selling us out: our government or google?
It seems to me that Google is on no-one's side but her own and her use of the data we give her (a.k.a. her product) is a part of her business model. As for the Governments, are they on our side? I doubt it. We are there to give them want they want.
The inter-governmental level seems to be like a kindergarten playground: those who can bully, do bully and take want they want; those who want protection, give up their lunch money to the bigger kids.
For years, the governmental and enforcement entities have been diligently subverting the myriad & various laws & constitutions that protect an individual's privacy. Now, to their horror, these actors find that they themselves have become preferred surveillance targets. I cannot imagine a more appropriate and ironic outcome.
Welcome to 1984, Mister Congress person...Mr or Ms Prime Minister...Mister President. Did you really think that you could simply gaze into the population, and not have the population gaze back at you?
The take-down requests themselves aren't such an issue to me - every country will have legitimate take-down requests regarding illegal activity. The problem is the high percentage of spurious requests! What is going through the minds of our supposed democratic representatives when they think they can request embarrassing information about them to be taken down?
I'm of the mind that our countries should have some 'censorship watchdog', which oversees such requests and prevents them being passed any further than their office if deemed to be against the country's laws. Then each company would only have to deal with requests from one place per country. Would aid transparency and prevent fraud.
That's actually a really good idea! That could be combined with a central authority for reviewing and delivering legal records requests (FISA et al.). The unbelievable numbers of people who can currently initiate those processes is a guaranteed hotbed of fraud.
"Big Business" would sell you anything. That is the point of it.
"Government" is angling for votes no matter what the cost. If need be, they serve you a soup spiced with disgusting red and brown pieces of stale shite then tell you it is for your best while asking you to pay for it. That is the nature of government.
You know what you want.
[In the beginning, people] demanded inexpensive liquor, tobacco and consumer goods, clean women and a chance to win a fortune; and our ancestors obliged them. Our ancestors were sneered at in their day, you know. They were called criminals when they distributed goods and services at a price people could afford to pay. ... They had what they called laissez-faire, and it worked for a while until they got to tinkering with it. They demanded things called protective tariffs, tax remissions, subsidies — regulation, regulation, regulation, always of the other fellow. But there were enough bankers on all sides for everybody to be somebody else's other fellow. Coercion snowballed and the Government lost public acceptance. They had a thing called the public debt which I can't begin to explain to you except to say that it was something written on paper and that it raised the cost of everything tremendously. Well, believe me or not, they didn't just throw away the piece of paper or scratch out the writing on it. They let it ride until ordinary people couldn't afford the pleasant things in life. ["The Syndic" by C.M. Kornbluth]
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