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The Military Censor Online Journalism
Posted by Robert Heverly on Thursday, March 20 @ 10:32:47 EST
Contributed by Anonymous
Free Expression
Anonymous writes "This issue was taken up yesterday, and continues today. The Israeli Chief Military Censor sent an unprecedented letter to the mangers of news websites and web forums regarding news reports during the war in Iraq. The censor orders online journalists and forum managers to hand for review prior to posting any information which may harm the security of the state or its citizens. In particular, the censor names certain categories of information which require approval prior to reporting: missiles’ crashing locations, type of missiles launched, military operative plans, reserves recruiting etc..


In the past, the Israeli censor ordered the removal of unapproved content from websites after an unauthorized material which pose a real danger to the security of the state was posted. This is the first time the Censor requires websites to request approval prior to information posting.

The Israeli Defense Force seeks to be the sole provider of information in case of a missile attack to prevent unjustified panic or information leakage to the enemy in the minutes following a missile launch. The current censor’s demand from the online journalism community aligns with this policy.

The Israeli online community splits in reaction to the Censor’s demand. While some online activists criticize the Censor’s demand and claim for independence of the medium other websites’ managers call for public responsibility and assure to follow the Censor’s justified demand. What do you think?
"
 
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Re: The Military Censor Online Journalism (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, March 20 @ 21:09:26 EST
Query: If Israeli citizen Z were to call up the Iraqi mukhabarat (intelligence services) and provide them with detailed feedback regarding the location of an Iraqi scud's crash site, thus enabling Iraqi SSM commanders to lob the next scud more accurately, would citizen Z be guilty of espionage / aiding the enemy in wartime?


If so, I don't see why citizen Z should escape punishment simply because he informs the rest of the world, along with the mukhabarat. It would be an odd logic that allowed, say, an American DOD researcher to provide China with nuclear-weapons specs as long as she did so via a public website... I suppose there are mens rea issues, but given the wide public awareness in Israel of how scud-crash information can help the Iraqis, anyone posting such information to a website should easily qualify at least for recklessness, perhaps even for willfulness.


Apart from mens rea issues, though, is it espionage to provide the Iraqis with the crash site location? Presumably, it is permitted to provide the Iraqis with information that is already in the public domain (e.g. how to build a bomb from fertilizer), even if such information could aid their war effort. Does anyone know what the legal requirements are for proving espionage, under Israeli law?


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Re: The Military Censor Online Journalism (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Friday, March 21 @ 17:34:45 EST
It would be nice if more authors used the existing infrastructure for anonymous communications to set up weblogs. A recent thread on the cryptography mailing list at:

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40wasabisystems.com/msg03802.html

described the existing mechanisms for accomplishing this, which are somewhat limited but could be improved if there were greater demand.

It would be an ironic twist if file sharing technology, often attacked as holding only pirated music/video and porn, could be exploited to guarantee free speech that was largely immune to government censorship. See the freenetproject.org for an example. The same arguments which suggest that ultimately the censors will fail to shut down file sharing also predict similar failures of governments to muzzle their citizens.

In the longer term, information about the physical state of the world, such as which buildings have been destroyed by bombs, can hardly be considered sensitive or secret. Relatively soon, we will have universal surveillance as webcam technology becomes ubiquitous, where each citizen's viewpoint is publicly available to all. In such a world, government attempts to keep secret obvious facts about the physical infrastructure are doomed. Better to accept that reality and begin to examine the distinction between what can be kept secret and what is inherently public. That would be a foresightful approach.


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