BasBasBas.com

Tag: freedom of speech

  • Turkey seeks names of YouTube’s Ataturk insulters from U.S. government

    Hurriyet Daily News reports the following:

    Turkey seeks names of YouTube's Ataturk insulters from U.S. gov't article

    Excuse me? Is this the Soviet Union I’m living in? In the past I’ve made a comparison between Turkey and China regarding the freedom of the press and I also said at the time that it was an exaggerated comparison, as Turkey’s press enjoys a lot more freedom than China’s. But this, this has not been equaled by China, I believe.

    This summer we saw American Tibetan activists hold demonstrations in China during the Olympic games; they could not have done that if they got detained upon entering the country. Yes, they were arrested and deported, but only after committing a criminal fact in China. Most of their names could have and should have been known to the Chinese government. They write about the Tibetan cause publicly.

    What this prosecuter is asking for is detestable and I am shocked and outraged.

    “Those YouTube users determined to be living outside Turkey will be detained upon entering the country.”

    Detained and then what? Imprisoned for insulting Turkey? They did not commit any illegal acts if they published these videos outside of Turkey, unless they are Turkish citizens, which might make it illegal. If I were to say “the US is a big pile of smelly cowdung”, I cannot be arrested upon entering the US. If I however threaten someone in the US, particularly government officials, there’s a good case for them to find out my name and to detain me upon entering the country. What this prosecutor is asking for is to limit the freedom of speech with matters pertaining to Turkey worldwide.

    The whole YouTube ban is pointless anyway. Research in Alexa.com’s traffic ranking system has shown that YouTube is the 10th most popular site in Turkey. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan surprised everyone when he stated that even he uses YouTube.

    In other news Hurriyet reports the following:

    ““There was a vigorous internal debate between Wong and her colleagues at the top of Google’s legal pyramid.” Wong, who had to play mediator, decided that Google, by using a technique called IP blocking, would prevent access to videos that clearly violated Turkish law, but only in Turkey. For a time, this solution seemed to work for the Turkish judges, who reopened access to YouTube.

    But last June a Turkish prosecutor made a demand that Google block access to the offending videos all over the world, to protect the rights and sensitivities of Turks living outside the country. Google refused, arguing that one nation’s government should not be able to set limits of speech for Internet users worldwide. As a result Youtube has remained blocked in Turkey.”

    Me: Hey Twitter! Some guy on your network said my site sucks and used some profanity. I feel really insulted. Can you ban the entire network from saying bad things about me? Oh you can just make it so that my IP address can not see it anymore? Well, I’ll be using proxies to see it anyway, but I’d prefer if you would make any insulting depictions of my site invisible all around the world.

    FAIL.

    The vice president of the European Parliament’s Human Rights Sub-Committee, Howitt, criticized the ban, saying that around 1,000 websites are blocked in Turkey and this places the country alongside some of the world’s worst nations for cyber censorship.

    The information age is here and it’s never going away. You’re a really marvelous country Turkey, but it’s time to do something about these ridiculous prosecutions.

    BasBasBas.com is about a Dutch student living in Istanbul. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

  • Germany Shuts Down Wikipedia, Earthquake Hits Sofia, Brazilian Bloggers Take To Streets

    Thank God I didn’t wake up with a hangover today. Where to begin!

    Germany Shuts Down Wikipedia

    Censorship’s creeping up on us. Just 3 weeks ago I wrote about Turkey’s ban of Blogger/Blogspot, which I didn’t write about because I specifically care about Turkey’s internet, but because I care about the freedom of the internet. I’m sure a lot of visitors were able to stay detached from the situation and not care so much, maybe this time the news will have more impact because even Germany is guilty of web censorship now.

    Lutz Heilmann, a German parliament member, took legal action against Wikipedia, because of an article mentioning his alleged involvement in the Stasi, Eastern Germany’s secret police during communist time. Great job in proving you’ve not been a member or showing that you’ve changed by getting the web censored, it’s almost like if the police called for web censorship after being accused of Gestappo practices. Oh wait, that actually happened.

    What happened in Germany is that www.wikipedia.de no longer links to wikipedia.org, the main site of wikipedia. The German version of Wikipedia is still available through de.wikipedia.org.

    It looks like Heilmann realized what kind of shitstorm his legal procedures were starting to bring down on him and before accidentally flushing his future political career down the toilet and he issued a press release (in German) saying that Wikipedia can make Wikipedia.org accessible via Wikipedia.de again. He also adds that it wasn’t about censorship for him. Hey, guess what, this is exactly what China says too. Good job, Lutz.

    More at TechCrunch.

    Earthquake Hits Sofia, Bulgaria

    Last night after coming home from meeting with Hans, a Dutch expat and international communication specialist in Istanbul, I had an email in my inbox from my girlfriend telling me that there was an earthquake in Sofia. She’s fine, her family’s fine and I believe my friends are all safe, since I already spoke to those living closest to the epicenter. It was a 4.0-magnitude (Richter scale) earthquake lasting 2.3 seconds.

    This morning there was an aftershock, which was less heavy.

    More at Novinite.

    Brazilian Bloggers Take To Streets

    Coming back to the topic of internet freedom, Brazilian bloggers and internet junkies (in the good sense of the word) took to the streets in São Paolo to demonstrate against the Digital Crimes Bill, which defines cyber-crimes and stipulates penalties accordingly. Bloggers feel the bill, which was passed by the Brazilian Senate in July, is too loosely formulated and might lead to over-surveillance of the internet at the cost of freedom of speech and expression.

    More at Global Voices.

    What are some of the best initiatives you have seen regarding the freedom of speech on the internet? Or, completely unrelated, have you ever been in an earthquake?

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  • Dutch Police Union Head Calls for Web Censorship

    In response to the intimidation of a Dutch police woman, both on- and offline, head of police union ACP, Geert van de Kamp, has called for web censorship.

    An investigation has been launched into the intimidation of the police woman, who works for the foreign police of The Netherlands. In the night of Monday to Tuesday, unknown people vandalized the front door of the police woman’s house with red paint.

    Also, the tires of the police woman’s car were slashed.

    A group called the Winterschilders (Winterpainters) claimed responsibility for the act by posting a message on indymedia.nl, which included the full name and address of the police woman (and a picture, claims the police union). Their message reads:

    Tonight The Winterpainters visited XXX, foreign police, XXX, XXX. (XXX replacing her personal data which have been removed by indymedia)

    Her frontdoor got some red paint on it; symbol for the blood of the people that suffer due to the practices of the foreigner police.
    We also made sure she couldn’t get to her work quickly today (flat tires).
    This is a warning to all her colleagues of the modern gestapo (foreign police, immigration and naturalisation service, justice dept.).

    You are responsible for what you are doing.
    Stop it.

    The Winterpainters

    Gerrit van de Kamp, head of police union ACP, calls the incident “unheard of”, saying this “absolutely cannot and may not happen again.” And what better way to react to Gestapo accusations than calling for censorship?

    Van de Kamp wants to ask the ministers of Justice and Internal Affairs to make it impossible to publish messages like the above on the internet, saying it should be “technologically possible” to filter such messages.

    Gerrit van de Kamp, you are either unaware of what exactly is “technologically possible” or you are calling for censorship. In a statement on ACP’s website, you call for “preventive measures to prevent name & address data of police people to be posted on the internet”. That’s a lot more nuanced and understandable, yet it is impossible to put such filters in place without seriously endangering the freedom of the citizens you’re serving. You are asking for ISPs to filter what their users are posting to the internet:

    • Should the ISPs report every filtered instance to the police?
    • How will the “technologically possible” filter prevent innocent people from being censored?
    • What prevents the government from adding more and more terms to the filter once it is in place?

    Such a filter would be a step towards fascism. Yes, you have the duty to protect police staff, as do we, as Dutch citizens, but you are calling for a very extreme measure. The internet shall not be filtered, instead, prosecute websites or people that post this data on the internet. Call for tough laws and higher penalties to discourage people from committing these acts. That way it will be the websites’ responsibilities to filter the content posted to them.

    Also, there have been many reports over the last 5 years about ill-treated asylum seekers and there has been a lot of protests about this, this incident being the most extreme protest thus far. Maybe it actually is time for the government to have another look at what’s going on and punish those responsible for incidents.

    The suggested measure in your reaction is disproportionate. Please reconsider.

    That will be all.

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  • Turkey Bans Blogger

    UPDATE!! — It is now known why Blogger is banned in Turkey. Click here for the new article.

    Since today, whoever tries to access Blogger or any *.blogspot.com domain from Turkey will get the following message on my screen:

    Blogger's banned in Turkey screenshot

    Click to enlarge.

    This is the same message we get if we try to visit YouTube, which is also banned in Turkey. In the past blogging platform WordPress.com has been banned as well (read more), to much dismay of many Turkish bloggers.

    It was suspected that the reason for this has something to do with Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, who has in the past managed to get WordPress, Google Groups, as well as Richard Dawkins’ website banned. It was then suggested however, that Oktar was active in Istanbul courts and this verdict was passed in Diyarbakır in South East Turkey.

    UPDATE – It is now known that it was Digiturk, not Adnan Oktar, that caused the ban. Read the new article here: 
    http://www.basbasbas.com/blog/2008/10/26/digiturk-causes-turkish-ban-of-bloggerblogspot/

    Turkey’s EU ambitions seem paradoxical to the infringement on the freedom of press and speech of its citizens, residents and visitors by banning sites like this. This is not China. This has to stopped. Good thing the EU’s making a blacklist of censoring countries and are creating software for people in censoring countries to use to overcome the censorship (Global Online Freedom Act).

    The court order of the ban on Blogger is also in very stark contrast to yesterday’s court approval of gay and group sex. Turkey’s a country of opposites.

    Some useful links to unblock YouTube/Blogger (blogspot)/other blocked pages in Turkey:

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  • My Interview about Wilders

    A few weeks ago I was interviewed about my views on the Geert Wilders movie Fitna by Alex, a PR professional, journalist and blogger from Bulgaria. I have a strong opinion about this, so when he asked me, I immediately told him yes and we made it happen. It was published a while ago and now I figured it’s time for a crosspost.

    What were the first consequences of the Geert Wilders video “Fitna” in Holland?

    Well, the first consequences actually came before the film was released. For about three months, we’ve been waiting for this film, not knowing what would be in it. Given the statements Wilders had made in the past though, a lot of people were worried that it might be very offensive to Muslims and spark riots in some of the immigrant areas of our cities.

    So the main consequence was a lot of fear and a big debate about Islam and it’s position in our society and western society – and how far the freedom of speech goes.

    After the release it stayed pretty calm. I think it’s less bad than what was expected or feared for and the tension really seems to be gone now. Or in the background.

    Was it changed because of that Armageddon-expectations? And in fact this couldn’t be the main version?

    I doubt it. If those expectations had come true, Wilders could have said “Look! I was right.”

    I don’t think it was in his interest to tone his film down. I would find it hard to believe he would done that, it’s not his style.

    Do you feel kind of disappointed of the final result?

    Partly. I was expecting a well produced film, though this is cut and pasting with fragments we have all seen numerous times, probably hundreds, in the case of the 9/11 footage even thousands of times. I am happy that he didn’t go as far as others said, because that could have caused national problems as well as international problems for the Netherlands (politically as well as economically). Some countries were threatening with boycotting Dutch products for instance.

    Can you find Wilders right in any of his statements expressed in the movie?

    Yes, with regards to Islamic extremism being a problem we need to be concerned with, like any form of extremism. No, with regards to the fact that he doesn’t limit his judgment to the small group of the 1 billion Muslims that is extreme, but is generalizing all Muslims.

    Although he himself claims he doesn’t; he is talking about the Islam, not the Muslims. I think that’s just a childish point, because when speaking about a faith in this way, you automatically talk about its followers.

    You’ve lived in Bulgaria for about an year. What makes Wilders differ from Volen Siderov?

    Well, I lived there a half year, and I assume Volen Siderov is from Ataka (?), but I didn’t get enough of an impression of him or them to say anything about that. Sorry.

    I do think Bulgaria is in a very different position than Holland though. Since the Islam in Holland came through immigrants; in Bulgaria through occupation by Turkey. If I wasn’t misinformed, at least.

    Can we expect that Geert Wilders will be treated like they did to Theo van Gogh?

    Times have changed a bit and both are different. Since the politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated, politicians have been getting a lot more security. Since Theo van Gogh, any politician that makes sensitive statements regarding Islam gets more security. Theo van Gogh didn’t have this, as far as I know.

    Geert Wilders has a secret address and has to change from residence every so often (I don’t know and I think they keep it secret for his safety). But yes, he is under threat and I’m sure that there are some crazy people who would try to get him if they just saw the chance to do it.

    It can be either Muslims who think he has insulted their faith/prophet, or people who don’t like his angry and right-wing tone (which can be extreme at times) and are concerned about the future of the Netherlands or just personally upset by him.

    http://bigtandem.wordpress.com/2008/04/03/bas-about-wilders/

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