[liberationtech] Venezuelan Open Source Software Communities Condemn Media Manipulation

[Andrés Leopoldo Pacheco Sanfuentes]

The argument here - I signed that petition, as a progressive Venezuelan -
is that the Social Media Services widely used worldwide are mostly US
based, and are usually not responsive to any other jurisdiction; so whereas
the US Government can certainly subpoena records - well, we know by now the
NSA does a lot more than that, or rather has an ongoing all-out subpoena OF
EVERY DIGITSL RECORD, thanks to the PATRIOT ACT! - to use in criminal
investigations of unlawful and violent behaviour, other countries have
little recourse, especially in time-sensitive, explosive situations, than
to block the services altogether for the sake of the population at large,
when they're predominantly used for violent purposes, and are not
widespread. Those 2 services fit the description above to a tee; neither
Facebook nor Twitter, nor Google services, orders of magnitude more
popular, were blocked, and if they were it was for a very short period of
time, due to overzealous nutjobs in the government bureaucracy, reversed
quickly.
On Mar 7, 2014 2:03 PM, "Dan Staples" <danstaples at disman.tl> wrote:

> Although the article addresses a number of specific issues relating to
> access of information and censorship during the recent protests, it
> attempts to justify censorship using the argument that "the right to
> live trumps the right to free information".
>
> This argument is made in reference to the likely government-imposed
> censorship of Zello and Pastebin. The problem with this argument is that
> it is not Zello or Pastebin or any other communications medium that is
> responsible for the right-wing violence that has been occurring. Those
> groups that commit the violence, right-wing or not, state-sponsored or
> not, are responsible for their actions. Those groups, and the political
> ideologies that drive and justify the violence, are what should be
> condemned.
>
> It is not justifiable to censor entire communication mediums that are
> used by violent groups, since those mediums are used by the public for
> legitimate reasons. Zello and Pastebin are both popular services used by
> lots of people. It is not justifiable to block all of Zello because some
> groups use it to plan violent actions, just as it is not justifiable for
> the NSA to compromise and surveil all Skype communications for
> purportedly similar reasons. There is no justice in forbidding use of
> the printing press just because some have used it to print calls to
> arms, to use an analogy.
>
> There is certainly a disproportionate amount of uncritical and
> inaccurate reporting on the situation in Venezuela, no doubt, and much
> of it is used to misrepresent elite-backed right-wing extremists as
> deserving victims of a tyrannical regime. But this type of justification
> for censorship is without merit.
>
> I'd really love to hear more people's thoughts on this, especially those
> with experience in the country.
>
> -Dan
>
> On 03/03/2014 07:11 PM, Damian Fossi wrote:
> > Original text in spanish: http://www.aporrea.org/tecno/n246101.html
> >
> > Text in english: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10437
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
>
> --
> http://disman.tl
> OpenPGP key: http://disman.tl/pgp.asc
> Fingerprint: 2480 095D 4B16 436F 35AB 7305 F670 74ED BD86 43A9
> --
> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations
> of list guidelines will get you moderated:
> https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech.
> Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at
> companys at stanford.edu.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/attachments/20140307/d8b32b13/attachment.html>