Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Canadian government increasingly asking for content to be pulled offline

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has been quietly requesting third party content be removed from the internet and the requests are on the rise.

According to documents tabled in the House of Commons, federal government departments have made at least 44 requests since 2006 to various companies to have content posted by others wiped off the web or removed from Google’s index.

However, the documents also reveal that 86 per cent of the requests were made in the last two years alone.

Only six requests were made prior to 2011. In 2011, the number of requests suddenly rose sharply to 26. There were 12 requests between January and September 2012.

Most of the requests have resulted in material removed and the government has also succeeded in having accounts disabled. Only a small number of requests have not been resolved.

Some departments have not made any requests.

The largest number of requests to have third-party content removed came from the Department of National Defence.
The requests from the government have cited a variety of reasons for content posted by others to be removed — from “unauthorized use of a copyright protected insignia” to removing a Facebook page set up in the name of a federal prisoner or erasing all traces in Google’s system of content from a federal government website that government officials said was “outdated.”

NDP MP Charlie Angus said it is disturbing the government is forcing internet companies to remove content, saying it is the kind of thing usually done by authoritarian regimes.

“I think what we are seeing is that the departments are becoming increasingly politicized. They are being run by the 20-some-year-olds who are the political shock troops of the prime minister.”

Liberal MP Geoff Regan said he is concerned that there are no rules to govern requests to remove third party content.

“What I find particularly surprising is that these documents show that the government does not have an overall policy for when to ask for material to be taken down … They should make it absolutely clear that you can’t use this to get at other kinds of things.”

Details of the government’s requests to have information wiped off the web are contained in answers provided to questions placed on the order paper by three separate Liberal MPs. The three requests cover separate time periods and different companies.

The requests did not capture changes to the government’s own websites such as the recent removal from transport department’s website of references to the environment in connection with the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The documents tabled in the House also provide fascinating insight into some of the challenges the digital era is presenting for the government.

The department that has been the most active in requesting third party content to be removed is the Department of National Defence. Since November 2010 it has issued 17 content-removal requests to companies ranging from CafePress Inc., Spreadshirt or Zazzle to Facebook, Twitter and Scribd. In its answer tabled in the House of Commons, DND said it asked for content to be removed because of “unauthorized commercial use of copyright protected insignia.”

In 12 cases the “infringing matter” was removed. In two cases accounts were disabled – one on Facebook and the other on Twitter. Three cases are not yet resolved with Koumbit, RU-Hosting.ru and Yahoo! Inc.

DND officials have not yet responded to a request from iPolitics for more information.

Industry Canada made five requests this year to Google to remove its versions of web pages the government had changed.

“The page contained information that was out of date and could have misinformed people reading that page,” the department wrote.

Status of Women Canada made two requests in January 2011 for the “removal of outdated content” from Google’s index. In August 2010 it had a file renamed and an old one removed “to comply with new Common Look and Feel 2.0 requirements.”

The National Film Board has made five requests since July 2011 to Google to remove copies of NFB films that third parties posted without permission on Google video.

The government hasn’t been amused by spoofs of its websites. In September 2011, Environment Canada had the RCMP request Netelligent remove two websites that spoofed Environment Canada’s website.

Canada Revenue Agency filed a request in June 2007 to have Yahoo! Inc to remove “offensive statements and accusations concerning senior officials of the CRA.” The agency said the website is no longer available.

In February, Correctional Service of Canada asked Facebook to remove a Facebook account “made under a federal offender’s name.” Facebook complied.

However, the government hasn’t always succeeded in getting content wiped off the web.

In September 2011, Passport Canada asked Google to remove a video from YouTube.

“The video in question features an individual urinating on a Canadian passport and subsequently attempting to flush the travel document down the toilet,” the government explained in the documents tabled in the House. Google didn’t buy the government’s argument that the video be removed because the Canadian passport must never be intentionally altered or damaged.

Nor did Fisheries and Oceans succeed in getting Google to remove an audio recording of a June 2011 “internal meeting of the Canadian Coast Guard in a Canadian National Defence secure facility where recordings are prohibited.” While Google refused the request, the audio is no longer available because the person who uploaded it closed their account.

Western Economic Diversification Canada discovered in August 2012 that U.S-based Jigsaw.com had mined information about 369 employees from its website. The site refused to take down the listings, saying each employee had to ask to be removed. As of Oct. 2, information on 293 employees is still on the Jigsaw site.

Some requests for removal have been filed after the government discovered that Google’s powerful search engines were able to reveal information that was supposed to be confidential.

One of the first requests to remove content came the Immigration and Refugee Board in 2008 after it discovered that web surfers could search for information about people who appeared before the IRB. The board began using a web robot exclusion protocol and asked Google to remove cached information from its systems.

The IRB did the same thing in 2011 after changes to its website once again allowed confidential information to be accessed through Google.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research asked for content to be removed after Google’s search engines captured a “Sponsor’s Assessment of a Candidate for a Fellowship,” part of a submission to the CIHR’s fellowship funding program.

The Public Health Agency of Canada asked Bing and Yahoo! to remove content in January 2010 after the agency accidentally published information about a funding announcement before it was made official and again in February 2010 after external links pointed to incorrect sites.

The Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec asked Google in 2011 to remove the specimen signature of the agency’s president. The content was removed.

David Fewer, director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), said Canadian requests for third party content removal pale in comparison with those in the U.S.

Fewer said the requests that concern him the most are DND’s requests to remove content on the grounds that copyright protected insignia were used.

“Just because and activity is commercial doesn’t mean that it’s not fair and it doesn’t mean that an assertion of intellectual property rights against it should automatically succeed. It’s very easy to hide a censorial impulse under an allegation that this is commercial and they are using our logo in a commercial activity against our will.”

Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author:  Elizabeth Thompson

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