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A few citations would be nice, as would some explanation of how the conduct you allege in any way resembles the behavior of the Chinese government. I am aware of zero cases where the U.S. government has taken down a site just because it concluded that the site contained propaganda that the government did not want the U.S. populous to read. I seriously doubt such cases exist. The fact that I can pull up Wikileaks or RT without trouble tends to suggest that the U.S. government certainly does not do this regularly -- I think these sites certainly would be blocked under the Chinese approach, much as China has repeatedly blocked the New York Times, or specific New York Times stories. (https://www.google.com/search?q=china%20block%20new%20york%2...)

I don't doubt that it has the capability, and that the U.S. would use it if there were a compelling reason to do so (your assertion about ISIS forums, for example, strikes me as an attempt to suppress organization and recruitment by an active enemy of the United States in wartime [insert largely irrelevant debate about whether this is really a war, here]), but I seriously doubt there is any credible evidence that the U.S. government uses these tools in a way comparable to the Chinese government.

We have a lot of problems here in the U.S., but I think you'd be hard pressed to make a credible case that pervasive Internet censorship, equivalent, or even remotely similar to what is done by the Chinese government, is one of them.

The ISIS example is far more complicated. It's part of information warfare. ISIS is of course partially supported by the US government for the purposes of destabilizing the Assad regime. But we don't want it in Iraq - just Syria - and its message as proved to move it farther than we want it to.

Much of the information warfare has to do with controlling the movement - stopping it from spreading where we don't want it to and letting or encouraging it to spread in Syria.

The State Department's "War of Ideas" and Congress's "Jihad 2.0" are higher level concepts that round down to the use of these capabilities to direct movements. Of course nothing can get done without some sort of conventional capability as well.

I'm sorry that you aren't aware of it. The allegations, I hope, and there's plenty of both evidence and anecdotes and law that supports it, will pique your interest.

I don't think its right to compare to China. I do think it's important to note that both need to fight against one another's propaganda.

Again, if you drop the case that it's like the Chinese, and just ask whether it is done (especially overseas - it is done in huge amounts overseas) then yeah there is pervasive Internet censorship and propaganda.

I encourage you to look up "strategic communication": http://www.acq.osd.mil/dsb/reports/ADA476331.pdf

Here's part of Jihad 2.0: http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf

The US works with media executives to develop foreign aimed propaganda: https://wikileaks.org/sony/emails/emailid/133736

(And if you hadn't caught it that's what the SONY hacks were all about).

I've also read quite a bit of scholarship on the Chinese program and it doesn't look so very different from the US side (from a technical perspective): http://gking.harvard.edu/files/censored.pdf

There are certain things that get thwarted. Facebook's 'anti-spam' feature blocked the organization of this past year's MayDay protests. Whoops.

Perhaps we're not really disagreeing about anything. I know, and have already agreed, that the U.S. can and does engage in so-called "strategic communications" overseas. This surely encompasses influencing the messages that reach targeted populations overseas in furtherance of certain strategic aims. I also agree that the U.S. might try to take down certain sites in particularly extreme cases (such as the U.S.'s targeting of ISIS forums that you allege).

What I strongly object to, however, is the equivalence you are suggesting between U.S. "strategic communications" and China's pervasive Internet censorship, both as a matter of raw degree, and also taking into account the different circumstances in which the two countries exercise these capabilities. When asking whether there is some sort of moral equivalence to be drawn between the Chinese and U.S. programs, the question to ask is when do the countries exercise their capabilities, not whether they have these technical capabilities, or whether they are sometimes used.

And I still don't see that you've provided any credible evidence that the two are comparable in these terms. (Though maybe we agree here too -- you say "I don't think its right to compare to China" but if this is true, I really don't know why your comments are relevant commentary on this article.) I certainly don't disagree that the U.S. and Chinese programs are likely similar "from a technical perspective," but I don't think the technical perspective is the perspective that should interest people here.

The US absolutely does censor group organization efforts in the US and political speech as well. What the US does is quite different than China and it faces quite a different set of challenges than China. It's an apples and oranges comparison. We agree here.

So to address why this is relevant has to do with China DDoSing content that is not a domestic product/service of China. Telegraph is not from China. China blocking Telegraph is like the US blocking stopfasttrack.ru and videos from warfighters in the Middle East. China blocking Telegraph is like the UK plans to take what they currently do and what they plan to do by law and block certain foreign tools for secure communication. The US, too, blocks (and sabotages) secure communication software - it has been defunding secure communication software with partnerships in the valley, has Comey talking to Congress about the need for software front doors, and the Snowden leaks showed us how comprehensively backdoored everything is including relationships between vendors and services with customers.

The US does this with foreign developed services and it thwarts secure communication capabilities both provided by foreign governments and its own private sector intended for domestic use.

That's the equivalence and the relevance.

>The US absolutely does censor group organization efforts in the US and political speech as well.

But this is precisely the claim for which you have provided no substantial support (though you have provided ample support for the uncontroversial assertion that the U.S. engages in strategic communications operations), other than 1) a single website that was temporarily blacklisted by private spam filtering organizations and ISPs, likely for some combination of factors including the absence of an SPF record, and which was promptly un-blacklisted upon request and 2) forums being used to support an enemy during wartime. What am I missing?

> China blocking Telegraph is like the US blocking . . .videos from warfighters in the Middle East.

No. It is not. It similar only in from a technical perspective. From the perspective of the government's motivations for blocking them, and the moral acceptability of those motivations, the two are entirely different. The U.S. blocked forums being used to publicize and support enemy activities in a war zone (by a terrorist group, by any definition, to boot), while China blocked communications tools being used by human rights lawyers to expose inequities in China's legal system. Whatever you may think about the legitimacy of the U.S.'s "war" against ISIS, it's not too hard to draw a line between these two situations.

The problem is not that, e.g., China censors communications. I think most would agree that this is sometimes necessary (though perhaps only very rarely). The issue, which you're glossing over, is when and why.

Yes. Sure. The US arrested hundreds of journalists from covering Occupy, leading to a sharp drop in it's Freedom of Press score (I don't trust that metric, but other people seem to like it). They also put a media blackout zone around Ferguson. Facebook has blocked individuals, myself included, from posting Wikileaks documents, Snowden documents and Manning Documents, as well as organizing May Day protests. The US Government infiltrated and disrupted operations at the Associated Press following the Benghazi scandal. The US knowly falsely linked investigative reporters with ongoing criminal activity to hold them from investigations and to get access to sources (Rosen), held whistleblower Binney and his family at gunpoint, blackmailed Joe Nacchio, persecuted and proscecuted journalists for unfavorable coverage (Jassam, Poitras, Greenwald, Risen, Brown), partnered with US domestic media to skew coverage (Dilanian, Miller, Gordon), manipulated US media to support the Iraq war (Fallujah, Zarqawi), coordinated the removal of journalists reporting unfavorable coverage overseas (Mohyeldin), has published false international cables to manipulate the domestic press on purpose (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/heroes-error?pag...), seeded fake journalists to ask softball questions at press releases (Gannon), have paid for positive coverage by US domestic media outlets (Williams, Gallagher, McManus), injected pro-war news stories into local news channels through the WCIA (leading the resign of Tomlinson), sent fake letters from the US Army to media outlets to get positive coverage, completely fabricated hero stories and trotted them about the media (Lynch), repealed restrictions on propaganda operations in the Smith-Mundt Act so that propaganda aimed ultimately at other audiences can now be legally consumed and need not be prevented from consumption by Americans, has used coerced testimony to justify policy goals (reporting them to media as fact - Bush torture programs in advance of Iraq), research on at least both vote manipulation and emotion manipulation to be weaponized against other countries were tested on Americans - one during the 2010 congressional elections), made it impossible in practical terms for third parties to get access to the presidential debates, astroturfed during elections, released press information at inconvenient times to discourage press coverage (e.g. NSA oversight report on Christmas Eve). Hell, politicians and policy makers often either have relatives in influential positions in the media or sit on a board of directors. When Hillary Clinton said that the Benghazi attacks were about a youtube video, did you believe her? Hell, Bush Jr. instanciated HSPD-5 that clarified the use of information support for civil affairs (domestic propaganda) during the use of states of emergency. Then again his administration also perpetrated international fraud to justify the invasion of Iraq by knowingly falsifying evidence: knowingly and falsely linking anthrax from US bioweapons labs, weapons of mass destruction and 9/11 to Saddam; coordinated with intelligence agencies under the cover the UN commission.

If you ask anyone from outside America whether its citizens exist in a media bubble they will tell you that it's true. It's like talking to a Russian and telling them that they have state sponsored propaganda. They are going to be skeptical - and it will seem like for good reasons.

> No. It is not. It similar only in from a technical perspective. From the perspective of the government's motivations for blocking them, and the moral acceptability of those motivations, the two are entirely different.

The motivations are pretty similar in this case, and the acceptability is the same.

I cited examples far beyond the ISIS/ISIL case. We're talking about those now. The 'tools by human rights lawyers' are state sponsored tools from Civil Society Organizations funded by the West. Like ZunZuneo and when the US criticized Cuba for blocking Cuban cell phone access.

nahname 3988 days ago

There is a difference between attacking the message and attacking the messenger.

It's true. Downvotes don't change that.

cbd1984 3988 days ago

Downvotes for making an irrelevant tu quoque don't imply people disagree with your statement.

Well it's not irrelevant tu quoque.

Telegram is like ZunZuneo and other initiatives by Western governments to force their adversary to choose to either censor something and take a PR hit or have their countrymen radicalised.

I ought to have made that link clear. I apologize.

nothrabannosir 3988 days ago

Thanks for the info, although complaining about downvotes could perhaps do with a sprinkle of references?

I don't personally care, either way, but "No, really! It's true!" does not generally a good point make.

I agree with this. Sometimes I get brigaded and I feel the urge to call out the immaturity.

For references, here's an example of a website that was simultaneously blocked on a bunch of providers because it matched domain name patterns of a Russia propaganda site: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/duplicates/38pmg8/hey_re...

Here's a FOIA document from the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications in general about their (mostly overt capabilities to engage the Middle East). They mention DoD covert hacking/DoS capabilities: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/cen...

There's plenty of this stuff to go around. My favorite (using MRIs to help develop propaganda for Twitter in the Middle East): http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf

> For references, here's an example of a website that was simultaneously blocked on a bunch of providers because it matched domain name patterns of a Russia propaganda site:

Not sure what this demonstrates. If you look at the comments it seems pretty clear that this was just an ordinary case of mistaken blacklisting, possibly because the administrator had never heard of an SPF record. And, worst case, it was blacklisted because it was mistaken for a Russian spam site. There is no credible allegation of governmental involvement at all, and no reason to think that there was. Moreover, it looks like the problem was long since corrected, through the usual means for becoming un-blacklisted.

A Russian spam site called StopFastTrack?

The US use the term 'spam' and 'trolling' as code to mean foreign propaganda. I can get you more information about that as well.