To Censor, US Official Doug Frantz Cites Snowden & Manning for Erdogan, Who's Used Copyright Law Like Reuters at UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 19 -- After Turkey's Erdogan shut down Twitter and YouTube, on April 18 US Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Doug Frantz advised to go after leakers, like the US has after Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, and not after the technology: lessons in censorship? Kinder and gentler censorship? From the US transcript:

"The release of the taped conversations involving the prime minister were certainly alarming and fascinating. I thought that the last one involving the Fidan conversation was shocking. I think that represented a clear violation of national security in Turkey. And – but the way we handle that in the United States, I think, can be illustrated by the Snowden case. You punish the leaker, or by the Chelsea Manning in WikiLeaks case, you punish the leaker; you don’t punish the technology. And I think that’s a critical difference. Otherwise, as I said, you’re dealing with a blunt instrument. You don’t want to take Twitter or YouTube or any other social media way from the millions of people who use it and who use it freely and legally."

  Or one can just try to remove from or block particular things on the Internet. Frantz's advise  follows Turkey's Erdogan, after using copyright law to censor, moving on to tax law. Twitter has been told it is a tax evader in Turkey.

  Tax law was good enough to take down Al Capone, so why not use it in the service of censorship? Likewise, to Google's YouTube Erdoban cited the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, allow for take-down or banning from Search of material that is copyrighted. 

   But can phone calls be copyrighted? As detailed below onReuters' specious claim, can "for the record" complaints to the UN against other media later be called copyrighted, and Banned from Google's search?

  Turkey banned all of YouTube, after its foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu declared, "a cyber attack has been carried out against the Turkish Republic, our state and our valued nation."

  Actually, the leaked call concerned plans to intervene in Syria, ostensibly to protect the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, including the proposed creation of a false rocket incident. 

  Intelligence chief Hakam Fidan says, "if there is to be justification, the justification is, I send four men to the other side. I get them to fire eight missiles into empty land. That's not a problem. Justification can be created."

  The national security argument for banning YouTube, by the country sponsoring the Press-less "Turkish Lounge" right next to the UN Security Council, follows Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan claiming he could copyright his leaked telephone calls, like Reuters at the UN claimed of its e-mail to the UN, sketched below and shown here.

   This use of copyright to try to censor has echoes in the UN -- and in Ukraine, where the Svoboda Party tried to getvideos of its Members of Parliament beating up a news executive taken down as violations of copyright. 

 On the Guardian website on March 21, where the video had been was a notice that "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim."

The New York Times reported that late on March 20, YouTube copies of the video were taken down "for violating the copyright of the Svoboda party spokesman, who seems to be working to erase the evidence from the Internet through legal means."

   This is a growing trend. As set forth below, an anti-Press complaint to the UN's Stephane Dujarric, now Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson, has been banned from Google's Search by an invocation of copyright similar to Erdogan's.

  On March 21, Dujarric from Kyiv told Inner City Press neither he nor, he assuumed, Ban had seen the Svoboda beat-down video. This seems noteworthy, given its prominence in Ukraine. Now we can add: perhaps Ban and Dujarric didn't see it due to the same censorship by copyright that has for now banned an anti Press complaint to them from Google's Search.

  But, as Inner City Press first reported on March 23, Ban while in Kyiv DID meet with the leader of the Svoboda Party. The UN has for now refused to answer whether Ban knew in advance who would be present.

  As to Twitter, Dujarric in his previous post in charge of UN Media Accreditation grilled Inner City Press about a tweet mentioning World War Two - the basis for example of France's veto power in the Security Council, which it parlayed into essentially permanent ownership of the top post in UN Peacekeeping, now though Herve Ladsous (coverage of whom Dujarric tried to dictate, or advise, Inner City Press about.)

   Dujarric's now bipolar tweeting has intersected with a recently revived anonymous trolling campaign whichoriginated in the UN Correspondents Association, in support of the Sri Lankan government, alleging that any coverage of the abuse of Tamils must be funded by the now defunct Tamil Tigers. 

  These outright attempts to censor are echoed, more genteelly, even as part of the UN press briefings these days. When Dujarric took eight questions on March 20 on Ban's essentially failed trip to Moscow, fully half went to representatives of UNCA's 15 member executive committee, including state media from Turkey, France and the United States. Other questions -- by Twitter -- were not answered, except those from explicitly pro-UN sources. These are the UN's circles.

   Google has accepted and acted on DMCA complaints about leaked e-mails, for example from Reuters to the United Nations seeking to get the investigative Press thrown out, and has then blocked access to the leaked documents from its search.

  Of this abuse of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, theElectronic Frontier Foundation's Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry told Inner City Press about the Reuters case:

"Unfortunately, it is all too easy for a copyright holder (assuming that the person that sent this notice actually held copyright in the email) to abuse the DMCA to take down content and stifle legitimate speech. As countries outside the US consider adopting DMCA-like procedures, they must make sure they include strong protections for free speech, such as significant penalties for takedown abuse."

  In this case, copyright is being (mis) claimed for an email from Reuters' Louis Charbonneau to the UN's chief Media Accreditation official Stephane Dujarric -- since March 10 Ban Ki-moon's new spokesperson -- seeking to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN.  

  Access to the document has been blocked from Google's search based on a cursory take-down request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 

 If this remains precedent, what else could come down?

  Why not an email from Iran, for example, to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency? Why not a sanctions filing by a country? Here is Reuters logic, accepted if only automatically by Google:

The copyrighted material is a private email I wrote in April 2012 and for which I never gave permission to be published. It has been published on a blog and appears in on the first page of search results for my name and the firm I work for, Reuters. It can be seen here: http://www.innercitypress.com/reutersLC3unmalu.pdf

  But this is true of ANY leaked document: it can be said that the entity or person exposed "never gave permission [for it] to be published." Does that mean Google can or should block search access to it?

Reuters' Charbonneau hands to Ban at UNCA: banned from Search?

  Can a complaint to a Media Accreditation official against a competitor legitimately be considered "private"? In any event, the DMCA is not about protecting privacy.

  Iran or North Korea could say a filing or status report they make with the IAEA is "private" and was not intended to be published. Would Google, receiving a DMCA filing, block access to the information on, say, Reuters.com?

  Charbonneau's bad-faith argument says his complaint to the UN was "published on a blog." Is THAT what Reuters claims makes it different that publication in some other media?

  The logic of Reuters' and Charbonneau's August 14, 2013 filing with Google, put online via the ChillingEffects.org project, is profoundly anti free press.

  The fact that Google accepts or didn't check, to remain in the DMCA Safe Harbor, the filing makes it even worse. The request to take-down wasn't made to InnerCityPress.com or its server -- it would have been rejected. But banning a page from Search has the same censoring effect.

  The US has a regime to protect freedom of the press, and against prior restraint. But this is a loophole, exploited cynically by Reuters. What if a media conducted a long investigation of a mayor, fueled by a leaked email. When the story was published, could the Mayor make a Reuters-like filing with Google and get it blocked?

  Here is the text of Charbonneau's communication to the UN's top Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit official Stephane Dujarric and MALU's manager, to which he claimed "copyright" and for now has banned from Google's Search:

Hi Isabelle and Stephane,

I just wanted to pass on for the record that I was just confronted by Matt Lee in the DHL auditorium in very hostile fashion a short while ago (there were several witnesses, including Giampaolo). He's obviously gotten wind that there's a movement afoot to expel him from the UNCA executive committee, though he doesn't know the details yet. But he was going out of his way to be as intimidating and aggressive as possible towards me, told me I "disgust" him, etc.

In all my 20+ years of reporting I've never been approached like that by a follow journalist in any press corps, no matter how stressful things got. He's become someone who's making it very hard for me and others in the UN press to do our jobs. His harassment of fellow reporters is reaching a new fever pitch.

I just thought you should know this.

Cheers,

Lou
Louis Charbonneau
Bureau Chief. United Nations
Reuters News Thomson Reuters reuters. com

This email was sent to you by Thomson Reuters, the global news and information company.

"UNCA" in the for-now banned e-mail is the United Nations Correspondents Association. The story developed here, as to Sri Lanka; here is a sample pick-up this past weekend in Italian, to which we link and give full credit, translated into English (NOT for now by Google) --

The fool of Reuters to the UN

by Mahesh - 12/27/2013 -calls for the removal of a letter from the head of his bureau at the United Nations, pursuing a copyright infringement on the part of the competition
Try to make out a small competitor from the UN press room and then, when these publish proof of intrigue, invokes the copyright to release a letter from compromising the network.

MOLESTA-AGENCY  Inner City Press is a small non-profit agency covering the work of the United Nations for years, with an original cut, which become distasteful to many. Unlike other matching its founder master sent never tires of asking account of inconsistencies and contradictions and often refers to unpleasant situations involving colleagues and their reportage, too often twisted to obvious political contingencies.

THE LAST CAVITY – In this case the clutch is born when Matthew Lee, Inner City Press ever since he founded and made famous in the 90 's, challenged the screening of "Lies Agreed Upon" in the auditorium of the United Nations, a filmaccio of propaganda in which the Sri Lankan regime tries to deny the now tested massacres (and destroyed by International Crisis Group). In the piece, in which denounced the incident, Lee also announced that the screening was organized by the President of the United Nations Correspondents (UNCA), Italian Giampaolo Pioli, skipping the normal consultation procedure for this kind of events. Pioli then, was also accused of being in a conflict of interest, given that he rented an apartment in New York an apartment to the Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in Sri Lanka, named Palitha Kohona and is suspected of war crimes.

TRY WITH THE COPYRIGHT- So he comes to the letter with which Louis Charbonneau, Reuters bureau chief at the United Nations, wrote to the Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit (MALU) calling for the ouster of Lee, which the UN being there for years as his colleagues, but we see that this was not done. Lee, however, comes into possession of the letter and publish it, and then writes to Google millantando Charbonneau the copyright on the letter and asking for removal pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That is a bit like if a company request the removal of a compromising document from a journalistic investigation, in the name of copyright, a claim clearly absurd and disingenuous.

HARASSMENT AND THREATS- In the letter published, Charbonneau complained about the aggressive behavior of Lee and cited among the witnesses to cases where Lee had been "aggressive" towards him even Pioli.Lee with that piece has gained throughout a hail of protests from Sri Lanka and an investigation by the UNCA, along with death threats and other well-known amenities the refugees away from the clutches of the regime, but it is still there. Behold then the brilliant idea of Charbonneau, improperly used copyright law to censor the objectionable publications to a colleague and competitor. Pity that Lee has already resisted successfully in similar cases, in 2008 was the same Google to remove your site from being indexed in the news in its search engines, it is unclear what impetus behind, only to regret it soon after that even Fox News had cried scandal.

   

UN Has No Comment on UK Detaining Miranda and Seizing Laptops, Banning Investigative Journalism, Including in Somalia?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 20 -- After the UK detained David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, for nine hours and seized his computer and files there has been criticism worldwide.

Inner City Press on Tuesday asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky if Ban or the UN have any comment on the detention, on the use of supposedly anti-terrorism legislation to hinder journalistic reporting on government surveillance.

"No," Nesirky said. Video here and embedded below.

Previously Ban Ki-moon was quoted by Icelandic parliamentarians who met with him as saying that whistleblower Edward Snowden "misused" his position and information. (Ban has said it was a private meeting.)

Still, the terse "no" was at odds even with another answer Nesirky gave Inner City Press in the same noon briefing. When Inner City Press asked about recent treatment in Egypt of journalists, Nesirky said they should be allowed to work without harassment. The nine hour detention and seizing of laptops is not harassment?

  But as Inner City Press covered yesterday, old-style groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists urge more coverage of Egypt than of the Miranda case. Click here for that. 

  CPJ has its own blindspots, including at the UN support of a UK-linked wire service shown to be engage in spying FOR the UN. That's how the UN likes to work, spying where it can, spoon-feeding information to favored scribes when it can.

On that, Inner City Press also asked Nesirky on Tuesday about a story it was first to report, a whistleblower's complaint from Mogadishu to the head of UN Peacekeeping Herve Ladsous. Inner City Press wrote and published it on June 22, and asked the UN at the June 24 noon briefing. After providing no answer, Ladsous' spokesperson Kieran Dwyer gave it to another media.

Now the whistleblower has complained that media held back under pressure from the UN, and that the intervening UN probe was a scam. Inner City Press on Tuesday asked Nesirky if the probe is finished, and if the subject David Bax has been removed from Mogadishu or not. Nesirky said he would check. Watch this site.

   

Before UK Detained Greenwald's Partner, Dodged Spying Critique at UN on August 6, of TIME's Grunwald & Big Media Games

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 18 -- The UK detailed journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda for nine hours in Heathrow Airport, citing schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

  At the UN, we noted that when on August 6 numerous countries criticized the global espionage that whistleblower Edward Snowden has exposed through Greenwald, Laura Poitras and others, UK Permanent Representative Mark Lyall Grant in his statements did not even mention espionage, focusing on the Falklands or Malvinas Islands: here, here and here.

  The Guardian's piece today says Miranda was returning from Berlin. This Sunday's New York Times Magazine in a lengthy piece on the exposure of the spying places Poitras in Berlin editing her documentary. Is this the chilling premise the UK was operating on? So far they haven't said.

  The NYT Magazine piece, strangely, does not mention Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, who has written that he was contacted first by Snowden but declined to commit to publishing all of the slides. Is that true? Why did the NYT piece's author Peter Maass not address it?

  Greenwald on August 17 highlighted a tweet by TIME's Mike Grunwald that "I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange." Grunwald later deleted the tweet, and has gone silent on Sunday. (TIME has said the tweet does not represent its views). 

  So what is the relation between media mega-corporations'correspondents' on record and anonymous trolling tweets and the corporations?

 Finally for now on the UN: could one expect the UN of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to speak against this intimidation of a journalists, through the detention of his significant other? 

 Hardly - not only does Ban Ki-moon not criticize Permanent Five members of the Security Council (unlike his predecessor), Ban has also said, as quoted by Icelandic parliamentary from a meeting Ban calls "private," that Snowden "misused" information and his position. What a position. Watch this site.

   

Argentina's UN Security Council Month Has Latin Groups like CELAC, Class, May Have Congo- But No CAR Resolution?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 2 -- The first thing people noticed about Ambassador María Cristina Perceval's UN press conference Friday on the Security Council's program of work for her month as president was that she spoke entirely in Spanish.

  Of course, Spanish is not only one of the six official languages of the United Nations -- it is also the second most active language among tweeting diplomats, far outpacing French which France still claims is the language of diplomacy.

  The second thing people noticed, beyond some long impassioned answers about Argentina's history, was that María Cristina Perceval was classy. Before and after Inner City Press asked about the Malvinas or Falkland Islands and the UN's ultimatum in the Congo, nearly all of the questions were about Syria, and all pointing one way.

  When another journalist dared ask about the UN taking sides, in Iraq ten years ago and Libya more recently, many "correspondents" tried to shout the questions down. María Cristina Perceval on the other hand was classy, only asking that the question be "a bit shorter," making a small space between her thumb and forefinger.

  Inner City Press, after thanking Perceval on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access (in Spanish) and expressing hope that she do many question and answer stakeouts during the month, asked her if the MONUSCO mission checked with the Council before issuing its 48 hour ultimatum for groups to disarm between Goma and Sake in Eastern Congo.

  The answer appears to be no: Perceval said the Security Council sets the mandate, then it is up to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to implement it.

  But, we note, when DPKO is handed over to a single country four times in a row, as with France, and has culminated in a person who represented France in the Security Council during the Rwanda genocide and argued for the escape of genocidaires into Eastern Congo, isn't this an invitation for problems?

María Cristina Perceval said the Council may meet on the topic in August; for now it is only in the footnotes. Yes, an invitation for problems.

Inner City Press had wanted to asked Perceval about itsexclusive report of August 1, that France because of vacations says it will NOT be drafting a Central African Republic resolution this month. Given other officials' statements, for example the EU's Kristalina Georgieva, talking and writing about the plight of CAR, can one country's mission's vacations stall action? We'll see.

Inner City Press ask Perceval about another topic it reported on yesterday: the August 6 debate on cooperation with regional and subregional organizations. Would Cuba's foreign minister be coming, to represent CELAC? Yes.

  What about the Malvinas or Falkland Islands, which at least one Permanent Member of the Council told Inner City Press will be a topic on August 6? Perceval was diplomatic, saying that is an issue in the Special Committee on De-Colonization.

  As her press conference stretched past one hour, Perceval was asked about Edward Snowden -- by Voice of America, a media run by the US State Department, with John Kerry on the its Broadcasting Board of Governors -- and about migrants dying trying to get to Europe. This last question invoked the Argentinian Pope Francis; Perceval said she listened to him, not only because he's from Argentina, but for that reason too.

Footnote: we conclude with this because we must: Permanent Representative María Cristina Perceval after being asked for stakeouts by the Free UN Coalition for Access, responded that its co-founder Inner City Press is "most present" in covering the Security Council.

  Why then did the Department of Public Information and its partners, its UN Censorship Alliance, conspire to make a rulepurporting to ban media workspace at the Security Council stakeout, most glaringly by prohibiting the work table present at the stakeout before and during the relocation? 

   When Inner City Press bought and brought its own table, at the beginning of the UK's month in June, DPI came and took it away. This issue must be solved. Watch this site.

   

After Ban Ki-moon Is Quoted on Snowden “Misuse,” UN Claims It Was In Private Meeting: Double Speak?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 5 -- Of the US surveillance exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said “surveillance regimes adopted by some states without adequate safeguards are... counterproductive."

  But UN Secretary General has been quoted, in a meeting with members of parliament in Iceland, as saying that "the Snowden case is something I consider to be misuse” and that the opening up of digital communications should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did.”

  In the UN on July 5, Inner City Press asked Ban's Associate Spokesperson Farhan Haq to explain Ban's comments. If the UN system views surveillance without safeguards as negative, how could its exposure be, as Ban said, a “misuse”?

  Haq twice refused to even confirm that is what Ban said, insisting it was said in a “private” meeting. Video here, from Minute 6:49.

   It was a meeting with multiple elected officials of a state which speaks much about transparency. Can Ban gag those he met with? According to the Guardian, the quote is in notes taken by two attendees and confirmed by a third.

  But this is Ban's UN -- he similarly stepped back from things said on Capitol Hill; UN system whistleblowers complain of retaliation and a lack of protections. 

 While Haq went on to read out statements on freedom of speech, in Ban's UN just this early summer, Inner City Press has been threatened with suspension or withdrawal of accreditation for hanging a single sign on its door for the Free UN Coalition for Access, which advocates on just these issues. 

  Accreditation officials have demanded “urgent” explanation of tweets, and have tried to tell Inner City Press how to cover Ban and his head of peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous.

  It is in this context that Inner City Press believes the Iceland parliamentarians. The ball would seem to be in Ban's court to explain what he meant that information should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did.” Really? Watch this site.

  

As US Focuses on Journalists on July 17, It's “All Western,” Member Complains, "One Sided"

By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, July 1 -- As the US held closed door bilateral meetings with other members of the UN Security Council on its proposed program of work for its presidency in July, Inner City Press alone just outside the chamber asked the Ambassadors going in and out about the US plans for the month.

  Their thematic debate, Inner City Press was told, is on the 17^th of July about the protection of journalists. A concern was expressed that the US' choices for speakers are not balanced -- “all report for US, UK or French outlets,” one diplomat complained exclusively to Inner City Press, naming a reporter from US-based Associated Press and Richard Engel of NBC.

  "There's an Iraqi and Somalia, too, but they report for Western media," the complainant continued.

  There are, of course, journalists for non-Western media who are attacked and at risk. Wouldn't it be a further reaching debate with them included?

  Recently Inner City Press reported how the top officials at the UN Correspondents Association, from CBS and Reuters, asked blatantly one-sided questions, on Edward Snowden and Syria. 

 UNCA's president for 2013, Pamela Falk of CBSNews.com,asked then US Ambassador Susan Rice about “autocratic” countries like Ecuador, adding Russia and China. Is Ecuador autocratic? Is that really the focus of the NSA revelations?

This one sided view pervades today's UN, to the point of the UN Department of Public Information trying to ban even the sign of an alternative group, the Free UN Coalition for Access. Watch this site.

  

On Snowden, UNCA Calls Ecuador “Autocratic” & Russia “Uncooperative," UN Consensus Alliance?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 25 -- At the UN and even in its press corps there are a range of views, for example on former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and the countries he's been in and has applied to enter. But this range is not reflected at the top of the UN Correspondents Association.

  On Tuesday at US Ambassador Rice's last UN stakeout, UNCA's 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS began her question: “Can you comment on the autocratic governments of Ecuador, China, Russia characterizing themselves in the Snowden case as defenders of democracy as against the United States?” Video here, from Minute 9:50.

  Is Ecuador autocratic? Why this loaded question? Particularly from the head of an organization, UNCA, whichin 2012 tried to get smaller investigative Press throw out of the UN, and in 2013 lobbied for and sign onto a rule to outlaw even the sign of a start-up alternative, the Free UN Coalition for Access?

  UNCA's first vice president in both 2012 and 2013 is Reuters' Lou Charbonneau, who asked Rice: “Russia has been, on a number of issues, at odds with the United States, not just on Syria. We’re seeing with the Snowden case that they simply aren’t cooperating with the US.” Video here, from Minute 15:30.

  In fact, Snowden flew as a transit passenger into Russia, which does not require a visa. He has stayed since in the transit terminal of the airport outside of Moscow. Both questions are entirely from a US point of view. But this is the UN, as in United Nations Correspondents Association. Or is it?

  Filing the 2012 request for the UN Department of Public Information's Stephane Dujarric to “review” Inner City Press' accreditation was Voice of America, document as obtained under the Freedom of Information Act here.

  Earlier on Tuesday, VOA's Margaret Besheer asked Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari a similarly loaded question about Hezbollah. He replied, “Are you a young journalist or an old journalist? ... If you were a real journalist, you could not ask that.”

  The same might be said for asking the US ambassador about “autocratic” Ecuador claiming “to represent democracy.” But this is UNCA -- and it is why Dujarric's and others in DPI's attempt to outlaw even the Free UN Coalition for Access' sign is so unsavory. As it turns out, they work together. Who's autocratic, again? Watch this site.