Similar happens with the name "Eric Ciaramella", which YouTube instantly deletes. This is a name of a CIA whistle blower. It would be interesting to know what other words are in the YouTube censor list.
No Wikipedia articles on him either, and reports of people getting permanently banned from Wikipedia for trying to create that article, or even mentioning him in another.
If you want to edit wikipedia, you need to know and play their game.
Politically charged topics on wikipedia need multiple reliable sources.
I can’t find any sources, that would pass as reputable on wikipedia, on this guy.
Maybe if there was a script from Senate from Rand Paul, who spoke his name publicly, that could be used. New York Post is the only kind-of-reputable source I can find, I don’t think that’s enough for now
edit: people link Conservapedia etc, but you can quickly see the stuff is full of misinformation. The like to point out, as Rand did, that Schiff daughter was in some relationship with the CIA guy. This is provably false.
Maybe the Wikipedia rule on sources is actually good.
People who authored pages about him get banned, a couple got life bans. This is almost certainly censorship, not some extensive source verification. There also seems to be a media blackout on the topic.
I actively didn't want to know the identity of this whistle-blower. I wish parent had put the name at the end of the comment so I could skip it entirely.
I will not take part in some chilling-effect and/or stochastic terrorism effort (see Ping Pong Pizza incident); I understand why Google, wikipedia and Facebook wouldn't want to be party to that either.
Maybe you shouldn’t venture outside of the curated Internet then. If you don’t want to read something, you’ll just have to stick to places like Facebook that delete it to protect your eyes from such dangerous words and ideas.
Do you avoid spoilers? I do, and that doesn't mean I'm "afraid of ideas". Actively avoiding certain information doesn't require a curated internet - it helps when other people respect that (spoiler tags/warnings and such).
I expect most people who hang out on HN would understand that there are no good outcomes when PII is in the wrong hands - that's not even a controversial idea.
It doesn't matter that you didn't want to know -- all the people whose knowing of this matters... know, they all know. If you wanted the whistleblower to avoid reprisals by having his identity kept secret, it's too late.
I clearly stated my 2 concerns. The chilling-effect (by sending a message to would-be whistleblowers that they'd be tarred and feathered) as well as a "Lone-wolf" taking matters into their own hands, as it were.
I have no control what you (or others) propagate, as is your right - but I will not be part of it. I understand why Facebook, Wikipedia and others won't either (they too, have 1A rights).
Anyone who wanted to harm Eric Ciaramella could find that his name is Eric Ciaramella with a minute of research. The notion that scrubbing the name Eric Ciaramella from the internet will protect Eric Ciaramella is laughable. The only thing censoring information about Eric Ciaramella does is inhibit debate.
1. State actors also have a long and established history of abuses of power. We should not defer to what they have to say on issues related to their possible abuses.
2. Propensity for creating such a page is a strong indication of extremely poor judgement.
>You don't get special agent treatment for being in WP.
Yes. You do. WISTEC covers their bases, but they can't force large organizations to play ball at a whim. Those organizations need to be willing to help. And it's heart warming to see that they are.
What's more troubling is there's a list going around being used for censorship that citizens can't FOIA or see.
Citizenship has no bearing on the internal policies of private corporations. If you don't like the large corporate offerings, do without and use other services. Being a consumer of their services doesn't grant legal standing because you haven't suffered any definable injury.
World Socialist Web Site as mainstream press needs very-very big quotes.
And this Eric C character turned out to be a nobody (maybe a CIA analyst). So why censor this name? Could be a NSL? (But can that somehow compel the recipient to censor a name anywhere?)
This would be an incredible public service. While I believe Google is within its right to censor information on their platforms, the opacity with-which they do it is imo unacceptable, given the scale of their influence on the public dialogue. Similarly, I think any media conglomerate should be required to publish any formal lists of in-house gag-orders.
Ironically, it was google that first innovated along these lines with their “chilling effects” project. Any time a URL was removed via a copyright complaint, they would log it. If a search result was censored, you could see the copyright complaint. I’m not sure if they still do this.
Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" Isn't the point of being against censorship is that nothing is above the interests of public scrutiny? Partial censorship seems fundamentally contradictory in terms of the underlying moral justification.
>Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now?
Yes, obviously. Nobody is forced to have an absolutist position on censorship just like it's mostly silly to have an absolutist position on anything else.
>Who determines that "pretty clear difference?"
In this case Google, which is a private business. In other cases the government, or the courts. Depends on the issue at hand.
There's nothing contradictory about partial censorship in the same way there's nothing contradictory about having a speed limit.
And it even varies by culture. US media reporting on crimes in Germany tend to get confused (to the point that at least once they suspected some public cover up attempt) that they won't get the names of arrested suspects - that's part of our approach to privacy here, while apparently having the names out is considered a mechanism against misconduct by the police in the US (at least that's how it was explained to me when I asked why the names are always public).
I can follow both arguments but there's only room for implementing one in any given society. Societies overlapping like they do now (thanks to globalization and, to no small part, the internet) doesn't make that easier.
I mean going by a lot of American's perception, only the US way is the correct way, so it must mean that Germany is doing some form of cover up! To make things even better, Germany should ditch its civil law for common law! /s
Deleting spam is universally agreed upon as OK censorship. I think it's viewed as OK because everyone can see that many conversation forums can't even work if they're flooded with spam.
And to head off the "no, deleting spam is clearly distinct from censorship," imagine you write a book, so we're dealing purely with ideas.
Obviously, for anyone to read it, you have to promote it. If you post it in too many places or are too "hypey", you'll quickly get banned as spamming. You got censored, there's no way around it.
So we've always been in the "what censorship is OK" realm.
If you interpret freedom of speech as freedom of opinion, the sentence fragment "communist bandit" is a statement of opinion that should unequivocally be protected, whereas that isn't quite as clear cut for the name as such of a specific person. (Note that I think that the prohibition on the name is at this point completely moot anyway)
It certainly does not seem to be in the interest of the current US government.
To answer your question:
Protecting a whistleblower's identity is in the interest of US society as a whole. It protects the individual somewhat from persecution which in turn encourages people to blow the whistle on illegal activities, thus benefiting society.
If the last four years have proven anything, it's that the US gvt. is not a monolith. The three branches of the government are further subdivided into bureaus, agencies, committees, and regional subdivisions, all with their own distinct interests and concerns. The president may be the chief subject of public scrutiny at present, but that doesn't mean other interests within the state should be immune to scrutiny.
I can't claim to know anything about ciarmella's background, save what hyper-partisan, conservative outlets have spewed. But absent more even-handed coverage, or rebuttals from liberal and left-leaning outlets, the details of his personal history, and affiliations do seem to merit some level of public scrutiny. Anyone interested can look him up on Breitbart, conservapedia /wikispooks, or through any other connservativr outlet (oddly enough, not fox last time I checked). But I'd rather not link to those rags if I'm not confident of the veracity of the information within.
Still, it's redacted due to some interesting parties pressing charges. Protecting a whistleblower's identity is the right thing for sure, but I don't believe Google add his name on the list for the righteous reason.
That's a strange equivalence, and a malevolent comment.
Outing whistle-blowers (or supposed whistle-blowers) is bad for democracy. The government is supposed to be transparent to the people. This does not mean that the people should be transparent to the government, or that dissidents should be outed.
The "whistle-blower" was a federal employee making allegations of hearsay and intent identifying other federal employees (not just the President). What is the line that decides that one is immune to scrutiny while others receive the full brunt? Is it partisan lines, or perhaps seniority cut-offs? Carter Page received no such protection from being targeted and publicly unmasked, despite being a long-time investigation informant.
Do you find it implausible that an agent of the CIA could pose as a whistleblower to advance antidemocratic intelligence efforts against US citizens?
Look, I'm not saying that's what happened, I don't know anything about it, but the idea that we should be shutting down inquiry into CIA agents interfering in other parts of our government, given the known history of the CIA, is absolutely crazy to me. And it's not like they've changed! We're talking about an organization that just recently illegally spied on the Congressional illegal CIA torture investigation and then lied about it to Congress (also a crime) - and got away with it!
Even in other branches of the government, we know that "whistleblowers" are not always acting in good faith - the NY Times just did a story about a "whistleblower" lying to the press about what was happening and using that as an excuse to leak people's personal information to the press, all in order to advance his own political agenda. If that can happen at the IRS, surely it can happen at the CIA? And surely we should at least be able to look into whether that's a possibility>
Gotta love this site. Snowden is revered around here yet a whistleblower goes through the proper channels to report wrongdoing by the US government and they still get outed, named, and trampled. Do you want government oversight or not? Do you want whistleblowers or not?
>Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.
No Wikipedia articles on him either, and reports of people getting permanently banned from Wikipedia for trying to create that article, or even mentioning him in another.