Internet Censorship

Top Secret America: Google Launches Cover Up of ‘Google Spies’ Story

July 20, 2010

Prisonplanet.com - The ongoing saga with Google censorship has continued today as it emerged that once again the search engine giant removed a key term from its trends pages.

Alex Jones yesterday asked his readers and listeners to send the term ‘Google spies’ to the top of the trends charts in the latest effort to fight back against the company’s censorship of his films on YouTube.

The term related to a story we prepared detailing how Google is intimately linked with U.S. intelligence and has a history of censorship and surveillance.

Within a short time the term had hit the top spot with the “volcanic” status added.

...The effect of the term being pushed to the top of the trends charts is that bloggers and journalists pick up the story and begin to document it. A snowball effect ensues and millions of people all over the world are more likely to be directed toward the story.

However, within half an hour the term had been completely removed by Google and resulted in no news story links. These actions replicated Google’s activity in the days beforehand when it removed other terms such as ‘The Obama Deception’, ‘Infowars’, ‘Fall of the Republic’ and ‘Google Censorship’ – which had all become some of the most searched topics on the internet.

This is the epicentre of the infowar. Events over the past couple of days have shown that you, our readers, have the power to take the issues we cover and literally make them the widest read items on the internet.

Today we urge you to search the term ‘Google Launches Cover Up’ to make this article one of the most widely read on the internet ...

Feds Ignore Due Process, First Amendment, Shut Down Thousands of Blogs

July 17, 2010

Infowars.com - Once again, the Obama administration has violated the Bill of Rights. Earlier this month, the feds took down a free Wordpress blogging platform and disabled more than 73,000 blogs. The action was completely ignored by the corporate media. The site, Blogetery.com, was told by its hosting service that the government had issued orders to shut down the site due to a “a history of abuse” related to copyrighted material.

In late June, Joe Biden and Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel said the government would move to take down sites offering unauthorized movies and music.

“Criminal copyright infringement occurs on a massive scale over the Internet, reportedly resulting in billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Bharara’s office and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched “Operation In Our Sites” and executed seizure warrants against nine domain names.

Blogetery.com claimed the shut down of 73,000 blogs “was not a typical case, in which suspension and notification would be the norm. This was a critical matter brought to our attention by law enforcement officials. We had to immediately remove the server.”

“That seems odd,” notes Techdirt, a website that covers government policy, technology and legal issues. “If there was problematic content from some users, why not just take down that content or suspend those users. Taking down all 73,000 blogs seems… excessive.”

The DMCA’s takedown actions are a direct violation of the First Amendment under prior restraint. However, explains law professor Wendy Seltzer:

Because “DMCA takedowns are privately administered through ISPs… they have not received… constitutional scrutiny, despite their high risk of error.” Seltzer adds that “because DMCA takedown costs less to copyright claimants than a federal complaint and exposes claimants to few risks, it invites more frequent abuse or error than standard copyright law.”

TorrentFreak worries that the Blogetery.com case has set a precedent.

“Fears remain… that this action is only the beginning, and that more sites will be targeted as the months roll on. Indeed, TorrentFreak has already received information that other sites, so far unnamed in the media, are being monitored by the authorities on copyright grounds,” writes a blogger on the site.

“They say it’s because of copyright infringement, but is it really?… it would seem that only sites/blogs which were streaming movies and TV shows were shut down initially, but upon further perusal, it seems like the Feds just arbitrarily shut down a server with several tens of thousands of bloggers on it without due process as is usual with this administration,” writes Smash Mouth Politics. “How soon before they find some reason to shut down other servers or networks? What’s probably infuriating to the bloggers who were shut down is that they have no recourse. They have no idea why the server was shut down. And the Feds are mum about it. Also, if the bloggers can even get a hold of the server admin, they’re refused any explanation of why.”

In October, 2004, more than 20 Independent Media Center websites and other internet services were taken offline, not in response to alleged copyright infringement but for political reasons. The disappearance of the Indymedia servers was shrouded in secrecy and the ISP and government would not provide an explanation. On October 20, 2004, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit in Texas and argued that “the public and the press have a clear and compelling interest in discovering under what authority the government was able to unilaterally prevent Internet publishers from exercising their First Amendment rights.”

It was later discovered that the ISP had shut down IndyMedia’s websites after they were contacted by the FBI. The FBI said a particular article on the website nantes.indymedia.org contained personal information and threats regarding two Swiss undercover police officers. It was later determined that the article contained neither threats nor names or address information and contained instead photographs of police agents provocateurs masquerading as anti-globalization protesters.

The Obama administration — in step with he Bush administration before it — does not have a problem ordering the government to violate the First, Fifth, and Tenth Amendments. In its declared effort to prevent online piracy of copyrighted material, the government has trashed the Bill of Rights. It has used the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to intimidate ISPs to shut down web sites.

In June, a Senate committee approved a dictatorial cybersecurity bill that would allow Obama to shut down the internet. The bill, known as the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, would grant Obama the authority to carry out emergency actions to protect critical parts of the internet, including ordering owners of critical infrastructure to implement emergency response plans, during a government declared cyber-emergency. Obama would supposedly need congressional approval to extend a national cyber-emergency beyond 120 days under an amendment to the legislation approved by the committee.

Censorship Alert: Obama Deception Illegally Removed from YouTube

Made to look like a hack, Thought Police Block Mega-Viral Anti-Establishment Documentary After More than a Year of Dominating Viewcounts, Ranking #1 in Search Engines and Waking Up Millions to the False Left-Right Paradigm Perpetuated by Obama

July 18, 2010

Infowars.com - Alex Jones is on high-alert after someone managed to compromise the “ChangeDaChannel” You Tube account and criminally remove the most-viewed version of “The Obama Deception” available online, which had more than 6.5 million views and whose URL link ranked among the top of all “Obama” related searches.

The channel’s owner was tipped-off about the breach, and was subsequently able to change the password and prevent further deletions of Alex Jones and other patriot documentaries. Both he and members of the Infowars staff believe the video could have only been pulled from behind the scenes at Google or by a government-level cybersecurity admin with access to YouTube records, as the passwords were carefully guarded and unlikely to be guessed at.

The film, which has been attacked before, was censored at a critical time. Just one day before on Friday’s broadcast, Alex challenged activists to drive “Obama Deception” up in the search engines. Only a few hours later, Google trends rankings revealed that it was the #1 search term, above Lindsay Lohan, the BP Oil Spill or the death of George Steinbrenner. What’s more, the viewcount grew by nearly 100,000 in that same single day, demonstrating the accelerated attention the film has been receiving. Further, as a result of topping the online trends charts, dozens of fresh reviews in online papers and blogs were published, including Blue Star Chronicles, Mahoo News and Live Street Journal.

“This was a criminal act, and You Tube needs to investigate, track the IP and find out who did it,” Alex Jones said. “The Obama Deception was getting more and more popular, and the establishment doesn’t like the fact that it exposes the Left-Right paradigm and identifies Obama as a puppet,” he added.

Fighting back against the censorship of The Obama Deception and other patriot works is in your hands. Already, your hard work to promote and propagate this information has resulted in tremendous success. You are equally capable of responding to this negative act with a positive outpouring of numbers in the way of spreading the video, searching for the term and a million other ways of promoting the truth out there. Once again, it is up to you.

The Obama Deception has drawn fierce attacks since its release in March 2009– not only strong words attempting to discredit the powerful information the film puts forward, but in attempts to limit and block the film online. Nevertheless, an estimated 25 million have seen the film worldwide, thanks to hundreds of online versions and DVDs handed out by dedicated activists.

Even so, Google merchant and other shopping carts have blocked its sale after labeling the film as “anti,” “hate” or otherwise “inappropriate.” Before the film was even released, FBI officials asked suspiciously about the film during a visit to Alex’s office, where they attempted to gather information about the documentary, office employees and other information. Earlier in the film’s release, YouTube was caught fudging the viewcount and other statistics for the film. This past week, Alex Jones’ Facebook was blocked for displaying a “Gadsden flag”– a key icon of the Revolutionary War–which drew ire. The Obama Deception was taken down only a few months ago after a false copyright complaint blocked it for several weeks, but was later restored. Even a “Christian” version of YouTube has censored an upload of the film.

Images of President Obama as “the Joker” created a stir last year as well– and it was clear from interference that free speech did not apply to those holding signs with the image at rallies or putting up posters around town or on social networking sites.

A cadre of White House Intelligensia as well as a new breed of “Cyber Security” at the Pentagon have taken it upon themselves to regulate the Internet, conform “free speech” to their gated-and-streamlined Internet 2 model and “offensively” take on offending web entities. This action has been boldly led by the likes of Senator Jay Rockefeller, who in support of cyber security bill, stated that it might have been “better if we’d never invented the Internet.” More dramatically, Joe Lieberman and others have called for Chinese-style censorship and enabling a “kill switch” at the behest of President Obama or his successors.

Further, a literal information war has been declared in the online space, a veritable frontier battleground for freedom in the 21st Century virtual world. CENTCOM announced its intention to “engage bloggers” and counter errors or “disinformation.” The Air Force has a similar operation, as does the Pentagon.

Likewise, Obama’s Information “Czar” Cass Sunstein outlined a report for the Journal of Political Philosophy recommending engagement on the part of the government to infiltrate conspiracy groups in order to undermine them via postings on chat rooms and social networks sites. Even more outrageously, he has envisioned a scheme to censor conspiracy theories or tax those who disseminate them. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has also advocated regulating political speech and even banning books.

The flag@whitehouse.gov program even asked supporters to identify “fishy” blogs or websites that might be promoting “disinformation” about health care or other aspects of the White House agenda. The same concept took place during the 2008 campaign where Missouri ran an add threatening to arrest critics who “told a lie” about Obama or promoted ‘disinformation’ such as claims that Obama was born in Kenya.

The web has become the most important public space for political discussion in the 21st Century, as has been very “democratic” in its access to blogs, alternative news, individual and even unpopular opinions, the promotion of ideas and candidates (regardless of budgets or notoriety), audio-visual and printed archives and other vital material that should be protected under Constitutional and democratic principles, but are instead being bullied.

Blocking information is not new, but will only accelerate in the realm of the 21st Century Internet. Opponents of freedom would like to silence widespread online dissent, and will only find justification for moving forward to shut it down and censor its content. The Constitution and Bill of Rights put in place strong protection for expression and personal belief, and a high-tolerance for free speech for a reason– especially when criticizing or questioning high officials and leaders ...

Deleted Obama Deception movie Restored after Google nailed with calculated search blitz