English Newspapers Self-Censor on Release of Personal Information

brendan — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:30:31 -0500

Last week a disgruntled former employee of the far-right British National Party (BNP) leaked his party's membership list to the public, unleashing a torrent of Internet activity as Brits scrambled to find who in their neighborhood might be members. Yet while the list remains freely available on Wikileaks.com, no major UK newspaper or blog will link to it, and few will even mention the site where it can be found. (You can read more about Wikileaks and its storied legal history here, here, and here.)
The reasons for this are partly legal, partly political. Said James Edelman, a law professor at Oxford:

“In the U.S., the starting point is that you have the right of freedom of expression. There are ways it can be curtailed, but that is the starting point. It is almost the opposite in the U.K.”

Whether the topic is national security or the sex lives of the royals, the British press has a long history of censorship or self-censorship. Yet there is not statute or case law restricting linking of potentially libelous or illegal content. What has made the English press so hesitant in this case? According to blogger Matt Wardman:

“Links to material that is alleged to be defamatory...is part of the basis for the objections that the law firm Carter-Ruck have put to the New Statesman that have caused them to take down articles about Nadhmi Auchi by Martin Bright [Auchi, an Iraqi billionaire accused of corruption, sued The Statesman for publishing links discussing the accusations]. No determination has yet been made whether that will stick under English Libel Law, but if the New Statesman and their legal advisers are taking it seriously I wouldn’t go the other way at this point. You will be relying on not being sued, which is your call.”

In effect, the mere risk of lawsuit, baseless or not, is deterring the English press from giving full background for the BNP story. Regardless, Brits are getting their information from international sites. Wikileaks, which operates outside the UK, received 70 hits per second the day the list was released.

ONI Affiliate Reveals Chinese Surveillance of Skype Messages

jillian — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:38:58 -0400

Groundbreaking research by an ONI affiliate made major news today. Nart Villeneuve, a fellow at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, revealed in a joint Information Warfare Monitor/ONI Asia report Wednesday TOM-Skype, a special software for using Skype in Chinese, is being used to snoop on text chats containing certain keywords relating to topics such as Taiwanese independence and Falun Gong. Additional information not related to certain keywords has also been captured; Villeneuve's research indicates that perhaps certain usernames also trigger the system.

According to the report:

"The collected data affects all TOM-Skype users and also captures the personal information of any Skype users that interacted with registered TOM-Skype users."

Skype itself was not affected, as Villeneuve indicated in an FAQ:

"The Skype software downloaded from skype.com is not affected by the behavior. The only time “normal” Skype users are affected is when they communicate with TOM-Skype users."

The New York Times presented Skype's side of the story:

"Jennifer Caukin, an eBay spokeswoman, said, “The security and privacy of our users is very important to Skype.” But the company spoke to the accessibility of the messages, not their monitoring. “The security breach does not affect Skype’s core technology or functionality,” she said. “It exists within an administrative layer on Tom Online servers. We have expressed our concern to Tom Online about the security issue and they have informed us that a fix to the problem will be completed within 24 hours.” EBay had no comment on the monitoring."

TOM Group, the parent company of TOM-Skype's majority owner TOM Online, on the other hand, stated that as a Chinese company, they adhere to rules and regulations in China.

Of course, Skype is not the first US company to come under fire for kowtowing to Chinese authorities. Among others, Microsoft, Cisco, google and Yahoo have all been accused of complicity in building the Great Firewall of China.

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English Newspapers Self-Censor on Release of Personal Information

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