Media
Kashmir leader’s family charged under India anti-terror law
Police in Indian-controlled Kashmir charged family members of late resistance leader Syed Ali Geelani under a harsh anti-terror law for raising anti-India slogans and wrapping his body in the Pakistani flag, officials said Sunday.
Geelani, who died Wednesday at age 91, was the emblem of Kashmir’s defiance against New Delhi and had been under house arrest for years.
Read: Resistance leader’s death deepens Kashmir strife
His son, Naseem, said Indian authorities buried Geelani’s body in a local cemetery without any family members present after police snatched his body from the home. Police denied that and called it “baseless rumors” by “some vested interests.”
A video widely shared on social media purportedly showed Geelani’s relatives, mostly women, frantically trying to prevent armed police from forcing their way into the room where his body, wrapped in a Pakistani flag, was being kept. It showed women wailing and screaming as police took the body and locked his family and relatives inside the room.
Police said unspecified family members and some others were charged Saturday under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. They have not yet been taken into custody.
Read: India unveils new initiative to revive crafts sector in Jammu and Kashmir
The anti-terror law was amended in 2019 to allow the government to designate an individual as a terrorist. Police can detain a person for six months without producing any evidence, and the accused can subsequently be imprisoned for up to seven years. Rights activists have called the law draconian.
Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between India and Pakistan, which administer parts of the Himalayan region while claiming it entirely.
Geelani spearheaded Kashmir’s movement for the right to self-determination and was a staunch proponent of merging Kashmir with Pakistan. For many in Kashmir and beyond, he was an enduring icon of defiance against India.
Rebels have been fighting against Indian rule since 1989. The region is one of the most heavily militarized in the world. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the raging conflict.
Read: Health workers vaccinate Kashmir nomads
Meanwhile Sunday, authorities eased some restrictions that had been imposed since Geelani’s death, allowing some private vehicles on roads and vendors to operate in some parts of Srinagar.
Mobile phones were restored late Friday but mobile internet and restrictions on the movement of people continued in many parts of the Kashmir Valley.
Taliban seek to project calm as US speeds chaotic evacuation
The U.S. military struggled to manage a chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan on Monday as the Taliban patrolled the capital and tried to project calm after toppling the Western-backed government.
The Taliban swept into Kabul on Sunday after President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, bringing a stunning end to a two-decade campaign in which the U.S. and its allies had tried to transform Afghanistan. The country’s Western-trained security forces collapsed in a matter of days, even before the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops.
Thousands of Afghans fearing a return to Taliban rule are trying to flee the country through Kabul’s international airport. Videos circulating on social media showed hundreds of people racing across the tarmac as U.S. soldiers fired warning shots in the air. Another showed a crowd pushing and shoving its way up a staircase, trying to board a plane, with some people hanging off the railings.
Read: Concerns over US terror threats rising as Taliban hold grow
Massouma Tajik, a 22-year-old data analyst, described scenes of panic at the airport, where she was among hundreds of Afghans hoping to board an evacuation flight.
After waiting six hours, she heard shots from outside, where a crowd of men and women were trying to climb aboard a plane. She said U.S. troops sprayed gas and fired into the air to disperse them. Gunfire could be heard in the voice notes she sent to The Associated Press.
The U.S. Embassy has been evacuated and the American flag lowered, with diplomats relocating to the airport to aid with the evacuation. Other Western countries have also closed their missions and are flying out staff and civilians.
By morning, Afghanistan’s Civil Aviation Authority issued an advisory saying the “civilian side” of the airport had been “closed until further notice” and that the military controlled the airspace.
Afghanistan’s airspace is often used by long-haul carriers moving between the Far East and the West. Early Monday morning, flight-tracking data showed no immediate commercial flights over the country.
In the capital itself a tense calm set in, with most people hiding in their homes. There were scattered reports of looting and armed men knocking on doors and gates. The Taliban freed thousands of prisoners as they swept across the country and the police melted away.
Read:Who are the Taliban?
The Taliban deployed fighters at major intersections and sought to project calm, circulating videos showing quiet city streets.
“There were a few Taliban fighters on each and every road and intersection in the city,” Shah Mohammad, a 55-year-old gardener, said after coming to work in the diplomatic quarter. He said there was less traffic than usual and fewer people out on the streets.
Suhail Shaheen, a Taliban spokesman, tweeted that fighters had been instructed not to enter any home without permission and to protect “life, property and honor.” The Taliban have also said they will stay out of the upscale diplomatic quarter housing the U.S. Embassy complex “so as not to create any confusion or problems.” The neighborhood also includes the posh villas of U.S.-allied former warlords who have fled the country or gone into hiding.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 with a harsh form of Islamic law. Women were largely confined to their homes and suspected criminals faced amputation or public execution. The Taliban have sought to project greater moderation in recent years, but many Afghans remain skeptical and fear a rollback of individual rights.
The Taliban had also harbored Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida in the years before they carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. That sparked a U.S.-led invasion that rapidly scattered al-Qaida and drove the Taliban from power.
But the U.S. lost focus during the Iraq war and the Taliban eventually regrouped. The militants captured much of the Afghan countryside in recent years and then swept into cities as U.S. forces prepared to withdraw ahead of an Aug. 31 deadline.
Read: Taliban sweep into Afghan capital after government collapses
When the Taliban last seized Kabul in 1996 it had been heavily damaged in the civil war that broke out among rival warlords after the Soviet withdrawal seven years earlier. The city was then home to around a million people, most traveling on dusty roads by bicycle or aging taxi.
Today Kabul is a built-up city home to 5 million people where luxury vehicles and SUVs struggle to push through endemic traffic jams. Many of the younger Taliban fighters hail from rural areas without electricity or running water, and are getting their first glimpse of a modern city they had only previously heard stories about.
Media: May we have a 'Hurmoni' now, please?
These are very trying times for the media as public interest in usual issues are very low. Politics is gone and most are relieved because they say the same thing. Some politicians are still popular but that’s because they are amusing and make the audience smile loudly. People hardly care who has to say anything about anything.
While activist-journalists care about who rules Bangladesh and “dhandabaz” ones with whom to line up, for most media workers politics is a source of news. Now that politics is shut, news is shut too. How long can one report what the Opposition leader says about the ruling party’s failure to handle the Corona situation and the response of the ruling party that the Opposition doesn’t know what it's talking about?
Read:Is it tackling dengue or tackling Porimoni?
Economy never made much news because people are more busy making money or trying to survive than reading about it. As it is, most news is not positive with a corona hit economy so most stay away from reading them. Sometimes there is news but they are largely about people who have committed economic crimes but are now free for one reason or another or economic criminals but there are so many that the public no longer cares. However, a story with pics which show a criminal leading a fancy life abroad sitting on a sofa in his plush home is a better read than hearing about a group of hyper rich who just got off police charges as “ its ok now bro.” It happens so often that it’s no longer a crime, hence not news.
Sports and Sex?
Sports news is fun but not opinions. We are nowhere in any sports except cricket, - one of the top 11 in a sport which 15 play- so we want to see and hear about it. The problem is we are only in one sport but the most popular sport is soccer which we play so badly, we don’t want to hear or know about it. So it’s basically international sports and we don’t care about local politics or sports barring cricket.
Which basically leaves "entertainment media", always full of juicy stuff. And the crowd loves it. As of now we know practically everything about Porimoni and her crowd including gifts of qurbani cows though not enough about their patrons. A newspaper did publish a list of sorts and that led to screaming and jeering and a well-known banker-author was named who has denied any involvement. It was bad media or media desperate for anything about sex and scandals?
Read:Can the media survive without Porimoni… ?
So was the Porimoni affair created by the authorities in partnership with the media to save the media industry now in trouble? But Porimoni as a source of news also has limits. So in view of the crisis, may we have Hurmoni please to keep us going when Porimoni ends?
Can the media survive without Porimoni… ?
It’s impossible not to see Porimoni on every screen or page. She is all encompassing and truly total. Everyone is gorging on her and the hungry public is reading and hearing and either wishing she was here with them or thank god that woman and her gang aren’t destroying the innocence of Dhaka’s lumpen men who are oh.. so helpless.
But the crisis is not in the sexual threat that Porimoni poses to many. Certainly not in the liquor and yaba shaba which anyone who matters takes but media… The Porimoni episode has exposed that Bangladesh’s media is unable to survive unless its force fed with news and sources call them up and tell them what has to be written in many cases…
Also read: Dhallywood actress Pori Moni detained from Banani residence
Corona reporting exposed the crisis
Quality reporting on the pandemic is very low and one reason is that most media workers are unable to access quality information. The reasons are many. They are not the top layer of the class in many cases. Their skill in English is weak which prevents them from info access. And nobody ever trained them in the complex issues of public health reporting. So what they did was stick to numbers and figures. Highest infection rate in three months…highest infection since last week.. highest death.. higher death .. death…
At least nobody can accuse them of serious reporting but the problem is deep.
Also read: Is it tackling dengue or tackling Porimoni?
Can crony media survive without cronies?
An odd media crisis is that there are more media outlets than media workers so a decline in standard was inevitable based on over demand and low supply. Media investors are not investing to gain prestige like before which has now become impossible given the infighting within the crony media world but clout against each other.
So media A is saying to media B that if you print anything against me, I will print something against you.. it’s this tit for tat policy that is leading to more media outlets and hence the need for more workers.
So it doesn’t matter if the media is of minimum quality or not. Essentially if they can get it uploaded its media never mind what it says. Crony media is about cronies not media.
Also read: Hello yaba, hello liquor, hello Bangladesh
The Porimoni threat and dividend
The night Porimoni walked into the club and did whatever she did, and then went public with her accusations, her days were numbered. She had violated a sanctified space and the hit back was inevitable. She and her troupe live off the rich’s money so threatening them doesn’t work and it didn’t.
But what she did was provide sensational stories that everyone loves to read but no one believes because it’s so one sided. People are asking who were the people who were close to her, patronized her and so on.. But of course it doesn’t matter because the entire matter is neither about her nor wine and yaba but making sure everyone knows where power lies and how it can act if threatened.
Meanwhile on with Porimoni and all the stories including about the poor policeman whose investigations went a little too deep and landed in the zones of the heart.. or at least that’s what media is saying
Iranians fear new bill will restrict internet even further
For Ali Hedieloo, a 40-year-old making wooden furniture in Iran’s capital, Instagram is more than just a surfeit of glossy images. Like an estimated 1 million other Iranians, it’s how he finds customers, as the app has exploded into a massive e-commerce service in the sanctions-hit country.
But now, the social media platform has come under threat. Iran moved last week toward further government restrictions on Instagram and other apps, as hard-line lawmakers agreed to discuss a bill that many fear will undermine communication, wipe out livelihoods and open the door to the banning of key social media tools.
“I and the people working here are likely to lose our jobs if this bill becomes effective,” said Hedieloo from his dimly lit workshop in the southern suburbs of Tehran, where he sands bleached wood and snaps photos of adorned desks to advertise.
Read: Desperate for vaccines amid surge, Iranians flock to Armenia
The bill has yet to be approved by Iran’s hard-liner dominated parliament, but it is already stirring anxiety among young Iranians, avid social media users, online business owners and entrepreneurs. Iran is a country with some 94 million internet devices in use among its over 80 million people. Nearly 70% of Iran’s population uses smartphones.
Over 900,000 Iranians have signed a petition opposing the bill. The protest comes at a tense time for Iran, with Ebrahim Raisi, the former judiciary chief and hard-line protege of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, assuming the country’s highest civilian position this week. Journalists, civil society advocates and government critics have raised the alarm about the possible increase of social repression once he takes office.
The draft legislation, first proposed this spring by conservative lawmakers, requires major foreign tech giants such as Facebook to register with the Iranian government and be subject to its oversight and data ownership rules.
Companies that host unregistered social media apps in Iran would risk penalties, with authorities empowered to slow down access to the companies’ services as a way to force them to comply. Lawmakers have noted that the crippling U.S. sanctions on Iran make the registration of American tech companies in the country impossible, effectively ensuring their ban.
The law would also criminalize the sale and distribution of virtual private networks and proxies — a critical way Iranians access long-blocked social media platforms like Facebook, Telegram, Twitter and YouTube. It also would bar government officials from running accounts on banned social media platforms, which they now use to communicate with citizens and the press. Even the office of the supreme leader has a Twitter account with over 890,000 followers.
And finally, the bill takes control of the internet away from the civilian government and places it under the armed forces.
The bill’s goal, according to its authors, is to “protect users and their rights.” Hard-liners in the government have long viewed social messaging and media services as part of a “soft war” by the West against the Islamic Republic. Over time, Iran has created what some have called the “halal” internet — the Islamic Republic’s own locally controlled version of the internet aimed at restricting what the public can see.
Supporters of the bill, such as hard-line lawmaker Ali Yazdikhah, have hailed it as a step toward an independent Iranian internet, where “people will start to prefer locally developed services” over foreign companies.
Read: Drone attacks by Iraqi militias reflect Iran’s waning hold
“There is no reason to worry, online businesses will stay, and even we promise that they will expand too,” he said.
Internet advocates, however, fear the measures will tip the country toward an even more tightly controlled model like China, whose “Great Firewall” blocks access to thousands of foreign websites and slows others.
Iran’s outgoing Information Technology Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, whom the hard-line judiciary summoned for prosecution earlier this year over his refusal to block Instagram, warned that the bill would curtail access to information and lead to full-blown bans of popular messaging apps. In a letter to Raisi last month, he urged the president-elect to reconsider the bill.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Social media is a highly contested space in Iran, where the government retains tight control over newspapers and remains the only entity allowed to broadcast on television and radio. Over recent years, anti-government protesters have used social media as a communication tool to mobilize and spread their message, prompting authorities to cripple internet services.
During the turmoil in the fall of 2019, for instance, the government imposed a near-complete internet blackout. Even scattered demonstrations, such as the recent protests over water shortages in Iran’s southwest, have seen disruptions of mobile internet service.
But many ordinary Iranians, reeling from harsh American sanctions that have severed access to international banking systems and triggered runaway inflation, remain more preoccupied with the bill’s potential financial fallout.
As the coronavirus ravages Iran, a growing number of people like Hedieloo have turned to Instagram to make a living — tutoring and selling homemade goods and art. Over 190,000 businesses moved online over the past year.
Read:US takes down Iran-linked news sites, alleges disinformation
Although much about the bill’s fate remains uncertain, experts say it already has sent a chill through commerce on Instagram, where once-hopeful users now doubt they have a future on the app.
“I and everyone else who is working in cyberspace is worried,” said Milad Nouri, a software developer and technology analyst. “This includes a teenager playing online games, a YouTuber making money from their channel, an influencer, an online shop based on Instagram.”
He added: “Everyone is somehow stressed.”
Probe: Journalists, activists among firm’s spyware targets
An investigation by a global media consortium based on leaked targeting data provides further evidence that military-grade malware from Israel-based NSO Group, the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire outfit, is being used to spy on journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents.
From a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers obtained by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International and shared with 16 news organizations, journalists were able to identify more than 1,000 individuals in 50 countries who were allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance.
They include 189 journalists, more than 600 politicians and government officials, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists and several heads of state, according to The Washington Post, a consortium member. The journalists work for organizations including The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and The Financial Times.
Amnesty also reported that its forensic researchers had determined that NSO Group’s flagship Pegasus spyware was successfully installed on the phone of Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, just four days after he was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The company had previously been implicated in other spying on Khashoggi.
Read: CJA shocked at killing of photojournalist Danish Siddiqui
NSO Group denied in an emailed response to AP questions that it has ever maintained “a list of potential, past or existing targets.” In a separate statement, it called the Forbidden Stories report “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories.”
The company reiterated its claims that it only sells to “vetted government agencies” for use against terrorists and major criminals and that it has no visibility into its customers’ data. Critics call those claims dishonest — and have provided evidence that NSO directly manages the high-tech spying. They say the repeated abuse of Pegasus spyware highlights the nearly complete lack of regulation of the private global surveillance industry.
The source of the leak — and how it was authenticated -- was not disclosed. While a phone number’s presence in the data does not mean an attempt was made to hack a device, the consortium said it believed the data indicated potential targets of NSO’s government clients. The Post said it identified 37 hacked smartphones on the list. The Guardian, another consortium member, reported that Amnesty had found traces of Pegasus infections on the cellphones of 15 journalists who let their phones be examined after discovering their number was in the leaked data.
The most numbers on the list, 15,000, were for Mexican phones, with a large share in the Middle East. NSO Group’s spyware has been implicated in targeted surveillance chiefly in the Middle East and Mexico. Saudi Arabia is reported to be among NSO clients. Also on the lists were phones in countries including France, Hungary, India, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan.
“The number of journalists identified as targets vividly illustrates how Pegasus is used as a tool to intimidate critical media. It is about controlling public narrative, resisting scrutiny, and suppressing any dissenting voice,” Amnesty quoted its secretary-general, Agnes Callamard, as saying.
In one case highlighted by the Guardian, Mexican reporter Cecilio Pineda Birto was assassinated in 2017 a few weeks after his cell phone number appeared on the leaked list.
AP’s director of media relations, Lauren Easton, said the company is “deeply troubled to learn that two AP journalists, along with journalists from many news organizations” are on the list of the 1,000 potential targets for Pegasus infection. She said the AP was investigating to try to determine if its two staffers’ devices were compromised by the spyware.
The consortium’s findings build on extensive work by cybersecurity researchers, primarily from the University of Toronto-based watchdog Citizen Lab. NSO targets identified by researchers beginning in 2016 include dozens of Al-Jazeera journalists and executives, New York Times Beirut bureau chief Ben Hubbard, Moroccan journalist and activist Omar Radi and prominent Mexican anti-corruption reporter Carmen Aristegui. Her phone number was on the list, the Post reported. The Times said Hubbard and its former Mexico City bureau chief, Azam Ahmed, were on the list.
Two Hungarian investigative journalists, Andras Szabo and Szabolcs Panyi, were among journalists on the list whose phones were successfully infected with Pegasus, the Guardian reported.
Among more than two dozen previously documented Mexican targets are proponents of a soda tax, opposition politicians, human rights activists investigating a mass disappearance and the widow of a slain journalist. In the Middle East, the victims have mostly been journalists and dissidents, allegedly targeted by the Saudi and United Arab Emirates governments.
Read:Gaza-based journalists in Hamas chat blocked from WhatsApp
The consortium’s “Pegasus Project” reporting bolsters accusations that not just autocratic regimes but democratic governments, including India and Mexico, have used NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware for political ends. Its members, who include Le Monde and Sueddeutsche Zeitung of Germany, are promising a series of stories based on the leak.
Pegasus infiltrates phones to vacuum up personal and location data and surreptitiously control the smartphone’s microphones and cameras. In the case of journalists, that lets hackers spy on reporters’ communications with sources.
The program is designed to bypass detection and mask its activity. NSO Group’s methods to infect its victims have grown so sophisticated that researchers say it can now do so without any user interaction, the so-called “zero-click” option.
In 2019, WhatsApp and its parent company Facebook sued NSO Group in U.S. federal court in San Francisco, accusing it of exploiting a flaw in the popular encrypted messaging service to target — with missed calls alone — some 1,400 users. NSO Group denies the accusations.
The Israeli company was sued the previous year in Israel and Cyprus, both countries from which it exports products. The plaintiffs include Al-Jazeera journalists, as well as other Qatari, Mexican and Saudi journalists and activists who say the company’s spyware was used to hack them.
Several of the suits draw heavily on leaked material provided to Abdullah Al-Athbah, editor of the Qatari newspaper Al-Arab and one of the alleged victims. The material appears to show officials in the United Arab Emirates discussing whether to hack into the phones of senior figures in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, including members of the Qatari royal family.
NSO Group does not disclose its clients and says it sells its technology to Israeli-approved governments to help them target terrorists and break up pedophile rings and sex- and drug-trafficking rings. It claims its software has helped save thousands of lives and denies its technology was in any way associated with Khashoggi’s murder.
NSO Group also denies involvement in elaborate undercover operations uncovered by The AP in 2019 in which shadowy operatives targeted NSO critics including a Citizen Lab researcher to try to discredit them.
Last year, an Israeli court dismissed an Amnesty International lawsuit seeking to strip NSO of its export license, citing insufficient evidence.
NSO Group is far from the only merchant of commercial spyware. But its behavior has drawn the most attention, and critics say that is with good reason.
Read:Journalist Ranjan appointmented 1st Secretary (Press) at Kolkata Mission
Last month, it published its first transparency report, in which it says it has rejected “more than $300 million in sales opportunities as a result of its human rights review processes.” Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a strident critic, tweeted: “If this report was printed, it would not be worth the paper it was printed on.”
A new, interactive online data platform created by the group Forensic Architecture with support from Citizen Lab and Amnesty International catalogs NSO Group’s activities by country and target. The group partnered with filmmaker Laura Poitras, best known for her 2014 documentary “Citzenfour” about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who offers video narrations.
“Stop what you’re doing and read this,” Snowden tweeted Sunday, referencing the consortium’s findings. “This leak is going to be the story of the year.”
Since 2019, the U.K. private equity firm Novalpina Capital has controlled a majority stake in NSO Group. Earlier this year, Israeli media reported the company was considering an initial public offering, most likely on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Lockdown: DRU urges law enforcers to cooperate with media people
Dhaka Reporters’ Unity (DRU) on Wednesday urged the law enforcement agencies and other authorities concerned to cooperate with the media people in discharging their professional duties during the strict lockdown set to be enforced from Thursday.
In a statement, DRU president Mursalin Nomani and general secretary Mosiur Rahman Khan also urged the media workers to carry their press cards while performing their duties.
They said the government is going to impose tough restrictions across the country from July 1 to prevent the upsurge of coronavirus infections.
The DRU leaders said the government in its notification issued on Wednesday listed mass media as ‘emergency services’ during the restrictions.
Also read: Violation of lockdown rules to invite legal action, warns DMP
“However, in the context of past experience, it can be seen that media workers in different parts of the country, including Dhaka, have been subjected to various forms of harassment while performing their professional duties (during such restrictions,” the statement said.
Under the circumstances, the DRU leaders called upon the law enforcement agencies and the authorities concerned to cooperate and play a responsible role so that the journalists and employees of newspapers, television and news portals are not subjected to any kind of harassment.
They also requested the media workers help the members of the law enforcement agencies carry out their professional duties.
Earlier in the day, Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) Commissioner Md Shafiqul Islam told reporters that the journalists have been asked to cover their assignments after hanging their ID cards and they can move in the city to perform their duties during the seven-day tough lockdown.
Also read: Govt outlines restriction rules ahead of ‘tough’ lockdown
“Police won’t obstruct them. They can also use vehicles provided by their respective offices,” he added.
The government is all set to enforce a weeklong countrywide strict lowdown from Thursday in a bid to control the growing Covid infections.
All public movement, except emergency services, will be restricted during the lockdown by deploying the members and army and other law enforcement agencies.
US takes down Iran-linked news sites, alleges disinformation
American authorities seized a range of Iran’s state-linked news website domains they accused of spreading disinformation, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday, a move that appeared to be a far-reaching crackdown on Iranian media amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
The Justice Department said 33 of the seized websites were used by the Iranian Islamic Radio and Television Union, which was singled out by the U.S. government last October for what officials described as efforts to spread disinformation and sow discord among American voters ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The U.S. says three other seized websites were operated by Kata’ib Hizballah, which more than a decade ago was designated a foreign terrorist organization.
The website domains are owned by U.S. companies, but despite the sanctions, neither the IRTVU nor KH obtained the required licenses from the U.S. government before using the domain names, according to the Justice Department.
Read: Hard-line judiciary head wins Iran presidency in low turnout
The Justice Department announcement came hours after the Iranian state-run news agency IRNA revealed the U.S. government seizures without providing further information.
The takedowns come as world powers scramble to resurrect Tehran’s tattered 2015 nuclear deal and just days after the election victory of Iran’s hard-line judiciary chief, Ebrahim Raisi. On Monday, Raisi, known for his hostility to the West, staked out a hard-line position in his first news conference. He ruled out the possibilities of meeting with President Joe Biden or negotiating over Tehran’s ballistic missile program and support for regional militias — concerns the Biden administration wants addressed in future talks.
Relations between Iran and the U.S. have deteriorated for years following President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from Tehran’s nuclear deal and the return of devastating sanctions on the country. That decision has seen Iran, over time, gradually abandon every limit on uranium enrichment. The country is now enriching uranium to 60%, its highest level ever, though still short of weapons-grade levels.
Iran provides support to militant groups in the region, such as Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels, as it seeks to wield its influence far afield and counter its foes.
On Tuesday, visiting the addresses of a handful of sites, including Iran state television’s English-language arm Press TV, Yemeni Houthi-run Al-Masirah satellite news channel and Iranian state TV’s Arabic-language channel, Al-Alam, produced a federal takedown notice. It said the websites were seized “as part of law enforcement action” by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Read: Iran elects hard-liner Raisi as new president
The U.S. government also took over the domain name of the news website Palestine Today, which reflects the viewpoints of Gaza-based Islamic militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, redirecting the site to the same takedown notice.
Press TV, launched in June 2007, is the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting’s English-language service. Its Iran-based website, PressTV.ir, was not affected.
Most of the domains seized appeared to be “.net,” “.com” and “.tv” domains. The first two are generic top-level domains as opposed to country-specific domains, while “.tv” is owned by the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu but administered by the U.S. company Verisign. Seizing a domain on a major country-specific top-level domain such as Iran’s “.ir” would be apt to produce widespread international condemnation as a violation of sovereignty.
It’s not the first time that the U.S. has seized domain names of sites it accuses of spreading disinformation.
Last October, the Department of Justice announced the takedown of nearly 100 websites linked to Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. said the sites, operating under the guise of genuine news outlets, were waging a “global disinformation campaign” to influence U.S. policy and push Iranian propaganda around the world.
Yemen’s Houthi rebel group announced that its Al-Masirah satellite news channel went offline Tuesday without prior notice. It said the channel would continue in its mission of “confronting the American and Israeli acts of piracy against our nation, by any means.”
Responsibility for providing name service for the domain name presstv.com was apparently switched to an Amazon name server on Tuesday at mid-afternoon European time, said internet infrastructure expert Ron Guilmette. Cybersecurity researchers at RiskIQ found a total of 24 seized sites sharing the same Amazon name server.
Read: Moderate Iran candidate concedes win by judiciary chief
There are no private television or radio stations in Iran. Satellite dishes, while widespread, also are illegal. That leaves IRIB with a monopoly on domestic airwaves.
Marzieh Hashemi, a prominent Press TV anchor who, in 2019, was arrested as a material witness in an unspecified criminal case and has appeared before a grand jury in Washington, told The Associated Press that the channel was struggling to “figure out the reasons” for the seizure.
While airing in Iran, Press TV focuses predominantly on international affairs through the lens of how leaders in the Islamic Republic see the world. Fierce criticism of British and American foreign policy is common. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, IRIB has been in the hands of hard-liners who back Iran’s government.
Press TV has previously run into trouble with Western authorities over its reporting. The Anti-Defamation League has criticized the channel as “one of the world’s leading dispensers of conspiratorial anti-Semitism in English.”
Rights group: Facebook amplified Myanmar military propaganda
Facebook’s recommendation algorithm amplifies military propaganda and other material that breaches the company’s own policies in Myanmar following a military takeover in February, a new report by the rights group Global Witness says.
A month after the military seized power in Myanmar and imprisoned elected leaders, Facebook’s algorithms were still prompting users to view and “like” pro-military pages with posts that incited and threatened violence, pushed misinformation that could lead to physical harm, praised the military and glorified its abuses, Global Witness said in the report, published late Tuesday.
That’s even though the social media giant vowed to remove such content following the coup, announcing it would remove Myanmar military and military-controlled pages from its site and from Instagram, which it also owns. It has since enacted other measures intended to reduce offline harm in the country.
Facebook said Tuesday its teams “continue to closely monitor the situation in Myanmar in real-time and take action on any posts, Pages or Groups that break our rules.”
Read:UK announces sanctions on companies linked to Myanmar’s military regime
Days after the Feb. 1 coup, the military temporarily blocked access to Facebook because it was being used to share anti-coup comments and organize protests. Access was later restored. In the following weeks, Facebook continued to tighten its policies against the military, banning all military entities from its platforms and saying it would remove praise or support for violence against citizens and their arrest.
“Once again, Facebook shows that it’s good at making broad sweeping announcements and bad at actually enforcing them. They’ve had years to improve their work in Myanmar but once again they are still failing,” said Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist and whistleblower who found evidence of political manipulation in countries such as Honduras and Azerbaijan while she worked there.
The struggle between the military regime that deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government and those opposing it has sharpened in recent months.
Soldiers and police have killed hundreds of protesters. Last week, the United Nations’ office in Myanmar expressed concern about escalating human rights abuses after reports that a group opposed to the junta may have executed 25 civilians it captured and allegations that troops had burned down a village.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, had over 22.3 million Facebook users in January 2020, more than 40% of its population, according to social media management platform NapoleonCat.
Read:Resident: Junta burns Myanmar village in escalating violence
“What happens on Facebook matters everywhere, but in Myanmar that is doubly true,” the report says. As in many countries outside the Western Hemisphere, mobile phones in Myanmar often come pre-loaded with Facebook and many businesses do not have a website, only a Facebook page. For many people in the country, Facebook effectively is the internet.
On March 23, just before the peak of military violence against civilians, Global Witness said it set up a new, clean Facebook account with no history of liking or following specific topics and searched for “Tatmadaw”, the Burmese name for the armed forces. It filtered the search results to show pages, and selected the top result — a military fan page whose name translates as “a gathering of military lovers.”
Older posts on this page showed sympathy for Myanmar’s soldiers and at least two advertised for young people to join the military — but none of the newer posts since the coup violated Facebook’s policies. However, when Global Witness’s account “liked” the page, Facebook began recommending related pages with material inciting violence, false claims of interference in last year’s election and support of violence against civilians.
A March 1 post, for instance, includes a death threat against protesters who vandalize surveillance cameras.
Read:Ousted Myanmar leader on trial; critics say charges bogus
“Those who threaten female police officers from the traffic control office and violently destroy the glass and destroy CCTV, those who cut the cables, those who vandalize with color sprays, (we) have been given an order to shoot to kill them on the spot,” reads part of the post in translation, according to the report. “Saying this before Tatmadaw starts doing this. If you don’t believe and continue to do this, go ahead. If you are not afraid to die, keep going.”
Facebook said its ban of the Tatmadaw and other measures have “made it harder for people to misuse our services to spread harm. This is a highly adversarial issue and we continue to take action on content that violates our policies to help keep people safe.”
Global Witness said its findings show that Facebook fails to uphold the “very basics” of its own guidelines.
“The platform operates too much like a walled garden, its algorithms are designed, trained, and tweaked without adequate oversight or regulation,” said Naomi Hirst, head of the digital threats campaign at Global Witness. “This secrecy has to end, Facebook must be made accountable.”
Resident: Junta burns Myanmar village in escalating violence
Government troops have burned most of a village in Myanmar’s heartland, a resident said Wednesday, confirming reports by independent media and on social networks. The action appeared to be an attempt to suppress resistance against the ruling military junta.
Government-controlled media reported the fires were set by “terrorists” the armed troops were trying to arrest. The government and its opponents each refer to the other side as “terrorists.”
The near-destruction of the village is the latest example of how violence has become endemic in much of Myanmar as the junta tries to subdue an incipient nationwide insurrection. After the army seized power in February, overthrowing the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, a nonviolent civil disobedience movement arose to challenge military rule, but the junta’s attempt to repress it with deadly force fueled rather than quelled resistance.
Read: Ousted Myanmar leader on trial; critics say charges bogus
Photos and videos of devastated Kinma village in Magway region that circulated widely on social media showed much of the village flattened by fire and the charred bodies of farm animals. One report said the village had about 1,000 residents.
A villager contacted by phone said only 10 of 237 houses were left standing. The villager, who asked that his name not be used because of fear of government reprisals, said most residents had already fled when soldiers firing guns entered the village shortly before noon on Tuesday.
He said he believed the troops were searching for members of a village defense force that had been established to protect against the junta’s troops and police. Most such local forces are very lightly armed with homemade hunting rifles.
Read: Suu Kyi appears in Myanmar court for 2nd time
The village defense force warned residents before the troops arrived, so only four or five people were left in the village when they began searching houses in the afternoon. When they found nothing, they began setting the homes on fire, he said.
“There are some forests just nearby our village. Most of us fled into the forests,” he said.
The villager said he believed there were three casualties, a boy who was a goat herder who was shot in the thigh, and an elderly couple who were unable to flee. He believed the couple had died but several media reports said they were missing.