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Tuesday, 19 March 2019

Extreme censorship in New Zealand after Christchurch shootng



Facebook Operationalizes New Zealand Terrorism: FB Uses Tragedy As Pretext For Further Censorship And Integration With Police


17 March, 2019


Facebook employees removed over 1.5 million videotapes posted on social networks that captured the terrorist attack in Christchurch New Zealand.

This was admitted in a statement by the official representative of Facebook, Mia Garlick, as 1.2 million videos were deleted at the download stage.

She also stressed that employees of Facebook continue to work in this direction and, in particular, block other edited versions of the video as well.

The administration of the social network promptly blocked accounts on Facebook and Instagram of a person who, according to the authorities, opened fire in Christchurch.

In addition, social networks also has been deleting as many possible posts and messages made by people who FB claims support the actions of the offender, or who raise questions about the veracity of the official account, and furthermore are cooperating with the law enforcement agencies in A5 countries. Several arrests have already been made, including a man in Britain who posted on Facebook his views, which Facebook determined were supportive of the terrorist attack.

Moreover, FB (Facebook) has introduced additional layers of automated screening. This will prohibit some users, based on location, from posting “images, symbols, names or quotes associated” with the New Zealand terrorist attack. Problematically, this includes references to a score of historical figures dating back hundreds of years, which citizens, historians, students, and people with casual interest in history would want to refer to on social networks, for any number of reasons not related to terrorism or political extremism.

This creates the potential for Facebook employees, themselves now facing higher-than-average rates of suicide and depression, to lead law enforcement agencies in various jurisdictions to open investigations – leading up to arrest – of Facebook users for posting images, symbols, or making references to the names or quotes associated with the New Zealand terrorist attack. These seem to refer to names and historical references of figures painted on the sides and ammunition clips of the guns allegedly used in the terrorist attack.

The attack on visitors to two mosques in Christchurch and its suburb of Lynwood in New Zealand occurred on March 15th. The terrorist allegedly shot this on camera and broadcast the video on the web.

Fifty people, including women and children, are claimed as victims of the attack , another 48 are said to have been hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

The authorities of New Zealand called the incident a terrorist act, done by a clear supporter of ultra-right views. One of the perpetrators of the attack is said to be 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant.


Zero Hedge, LiveLeak blocked, sharers warned of jail as NZ censors crack down on mosque attack video

Zero Hedge, LiveLeak blocked, sharers warned of jail as NZ censors crack down on mosque attack video
RT,
17 March, 2019
New Zealand police are warning citizens they’ll face 10 years in prison for sharing the Christchurch mosque attack video, and a host of websites have been blocked as censors scrub the shooter’s manifesto from the internet.

Video footage of killer Brenton Tarrant’s shooting spree at a Christchurch mosque on Friday – which left 50 worshippers dead – was pulled from Facebook immediately after the massacre. With the footage proliferating on several hosting platforms afterwards, the Kiwi authorities have already charged an 18-year-old man for sharing the video, as well as for posting other “objectionable” comments days before the shooting.
The teenager faces up to ten years in prison, under New Zealand’s ‘objectionable and restricted material’ laws. Police have meanwhile issued an overt threat to anyone else looking for the video.
“Do not download it. Do not share it. If you are found to have a copy of the video or to have shared it, you face fines & potential imprisonment,” read a statement from the police via local news source Wellington Live.
Under the objectionable material laws, corporations can be fined up to NZ$200,000 (US$173,000) for sharing the video or any related content. Unsurprisingly, New Zealand’s Internet Service Providers rushed to ban websites suspected of sharing the shooting-related materials since the tragedy.
Reports from internet users across New Zealand say that 8chan – the site on which Tarrant announced his atack and posted links to his white nationalist manifesto – has been banned. Social discussion service Dissenter has also been banned, as has content sharing platform Bitchute. In neighboring Australia, ISPs have reportedly banned “cesspool of the internet,” 4chan.
Trolls and memers attempting to access Bitchute and 4chan were greeted with an Interpol notice warning that the sites in question are “distributing child sexual abuse material.”
Popular video sharing site LiveLeak has also been reportedly blocked – although its moderators explicitly said in a statement that they would not allow the live video of the shooting to be shared there.
Even the anti-establishment blog and economic news site Zero Hedge was roped in, and has been reportedly banned by some New Zealand ISPs. While the reason was not immediately clear, the popular anonymous news source has extensively covered the Kiwi censorship efforts in wake of the shooting and posted excerpts from Tarrant’s manifesto – but so did a host of other Anglophone media, including the Daily Mail, quoted in several Zero Hedge articles.
The 80-page manifesto – a violent invective against Muslim immigration littered with internet memes and 4chan insider jokes – has been scrubbed from multiple file-hosting sites, including Scribd and Pastebin.
The crackdown extends beyond New Zealand too. Far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was banned from entering Australia after the shootings, for a Facebook post in which he called Islam a “barbaric, alien” religious culture. Yiannopoulos had already been engaged in a protracted legal battle with the Australian government for almost a year to bring his controversial speaking tour to the country. While in the UK, police arrested a man in Oldham on Saturday for alleged social media posts “making reference and support for the terrible events in New Zealand.”

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