Guardian promoting GCHQ demand for more internet censorship
Picture created by thefreethoughtproject.com
In the past year the Guardian has been overtly promoting internet censorship. A while back they uncritically coordinated with Yvette Cooper’s insinuating “take back the internet” programme to make sure we all get “the web we they want”. Last week they uncritically published an opinion piece from Tim Berners-Lee, where he claims we should:
…push back against misinformation by encouraging gatekeepers such as Google and Facebook to continue their efforts to combat the problem…
While, of course…
…avoiding the creation of any central bodies to decide what is “true” or not.
Hmmm…tough thing to achieve you may think. Which is possibly why Tim doesn’t bother to tell us how he thinks it should be done. In fact we can be pretty sure, being a bit of a genius allegedly, Tim knows pretty well that Governments and corporations are so irreversibly intertwined, their policies and goals so similar, that by instructing Facebook to “take measures” you are, in effect, privatising Orwell’s Minitrue, and creating precisely the “central bod[y] to decide what is true or not” that he affects to fear.
We cn also be pretty sure that if/when Facebook/Twitter and the rest announce the creation of some new “special department” for further “fact-checking”, people at the Guardian will write editorials congratulating them on saving the internet.
That brings us to today. Today the Guardian are – again uncritically – reprinting censorship advocacy, this time by their very close associates GCHQ. This article quotes Paul Chichester, the head of GCHQ’s new National Cyber Security Centre, who says that Facebook and Twitter have a
social responsibility” to do more to “limit the spread of fake news” and control the flow of “misinformation”.
There is not a single word of analysis, doubt or even equivocation in the article. The headline reads [my emphasis]:
“Facebook and Twitter should do more to combat fake news, says GCHQ“
And that’s all the story is, a stenographic report of what Chichester said. Not a single question is asked about the implications of what said, or indeed why he might be saying it. It is a press release. It tells us what the people in power think and, worse than agreeing, simply refuses to acknowledge that disagreeing is even a possibility.
The “journalist” (Josh Halliday) who put this piece together doesn’t acknowledge that state agencies would have an obvious vested interest in controlling what the citizenry reads online, or that mega-corporations such as Facebook or Google could abuse this “plea” to take advantage of their users. He’s content to just reprint the head of the spy agency’s opinion, word for word. He is, essentially, reducing himself from a journalist to a state broadcasting service.
And he most likely has a long career ahead of him.
This is a response to “Facebook and Twitter should do more to combat fake news, says GCHQ”, published on The Guardian on 14/03/2017
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
Perhaps this is how you feel …
“He’ll attempt to alter times and laws” (Dan 7:25 ISV)
Yvette Cooper’s insinuating “take back the internet” programme – but they never had it in the first place. This is an attempted coup.
I read this before, but just re-read it and the reference to Tim Berners-Lee made it a keeper. The article should have the author’s name attached. OG shouldn’t post anonymous articles. When I click on the link to the org (thefreethoughtproject.com) that I assume has the article’s author attached to it, I saw the same top-of-post image, but it was attached to a different article! The author of that article is: Claire Bernish. So I typed Tim Berners-Lee into their search field. It returned nothing.
my entire cif history has disappeared – gone – yet i can still post? 2246 15/03
Excellent article. Funny how the MSM handles their comment sections. Guess they don’t like being questioned, let alone dissent to their narrative.
The Guardian has one of most censored comments section of all UK papers – so no surprise they advocate to censor entire internet. Dissent to Neo Liberal order will not be tolerated at the fearless censoring Guardian.
Yesterday, i told someone to go to Wikileaks. That was all. It was deleted. Normally, i take a screenshot. I did not think it necessary in this case. I was wrong.
Let’s see it then.
When the fake news, lies and misinformation comes from MI5/6, GCHQ, journalists and Governments, clearly these powerful unaccountable players need punishments that will stop their continual lying.
How about sending them to fight in Syria, armed solely with a single rifle?
These wars are so essential that those pushing them should also be the first to participate in them……..
The whole idea of freedom of expression and access to information that the internet has the potential to deliver is totally anti-capitalist and therefore anti-aristocratic. This is obvious.
The stripling internet development by once vibrant idealists has been turned into total exploitation by corporate behemoths and their CEO’s. As always the aristocracy has to allow these new kids on the block into their club, with conditions – conditions of compliance or assured destruction. These novices of the aristocracy are its public persona, and cover. The real eternal ghouls do not like the light. They have their spooks to protect them and the spooks have their informants and messengers.
GCHQ is an arm of the aristocracy which controls the state. The secret intelligence service in different emerging capitalist counties, but primarily in England, has a long, long history. It was created by the aristocracy for the aristocracy to defend itself and assure survival. It is now ostensibly international, but not quite and it still needs a power base. That power base is now the US. It still has its adversaries though, those that for many reasons were denied entry into the club like Russia
When capitalism goes into crisis and the aristocracy’s hegemony is challenged, the spooks and ghouls have to expose themselves. As with a Klingon bird of prey decloaking they have to expose themselves before the attack.
Sorry about the long story but my point is, it is not surprising that the Guardian has decloaked. We are just getting a glimpse what is really there.
Excellently said. I like the Klingon bird of prey analogy. It is just too bad that so many people buy into what they are selling.
“Allegedly a genius”? Aren’t you being a bit pretentious and denigrating? After al this gentleman gave the World the free internet we have today if, to paraphrase one of the founders of the American nation, we can keep it!
Yes, so much for the centre-left ‘Guardian’ ensconced in its comfortable little niche in the Anglo-zionist Empire. HM’s loyal opposition, as ever concerned about child-labour in Bangladesh, but at the same time supportive of a liberal globalist agenda which makes such things possible. You see, they will the end (or so they would have us believe) but do not will the means, which would involve a complete restructuring of the new world order.
Now how did that old saying go: Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
“….but do not will the means, which would involve a complete restructuring of the new world order.”
Enter Trump stage left…
The rot really set in after the security police turned up at the Guardian and demanded that they destroy the Snowden hard-drives themselves. It was a pointless, symbolic, ritualised… humiliation and castration of the Guardian and its journalism. Instead of doing what I’d have done, tell them to fuck off and imagine the publicity and fame if, as editor, they’ed put me on trial… Rusbridger… caved. This is extraordinary behaviour. He could have gone down in history, especially if his principled refusal led to a conviction and a jail sentence. The trial would have been worth its weight in gold for the Guardian’s image and so much global free publicity. How could Rusbridger let such an opportunity slip through his fingers. It’s what editors should be dreaming of.
Since Viner took over, things have gone from bad to worse at the Guardian and the paper’s porfile has crumbled away, seemingly week by week. The Guardain was, in reality, never, ever, as ‘leftwing’ as it appeared, but now it’s not even liberal anymore. Perhaps this is because today, if a national daily had a radical profile, because the ruling elite is so incompetent and unpopular, rapidly losing all legitimacy and a mandate… a radical and critical Guardian might have a really significant effect on the political agenda and even threaten the system. But, with a docile and castrated Guardian the opposition really has nowhere to go and no national platform within the media at all anymore. Except in the alternative media and the net, but that is perhaps another story? The story of how one successfully goes after the alternatives to the mainstream media and creates total censorship and control of the political narrative.
The Guardian, like every other type of corporate media, is compelled/addicted to selling advertising space.
They will not bite the hands that feed it.
Yes, whatever happened to the “fearless journalism” that The Guardian is still touting whilst asking for donations to prop up their failing publication? Something definitely changed following the Snowden affair. Perhaps it wasn’t only the Guardian’s computers that were literally smashed by GCHQ. Perhaps the entire publication has since been figuratively “smashed.”
What happened to the Guardian? They used to fight for free speech. Now they are like the NSA.
Did they get infiltrated after the Snowden leak?
Can anyone investigate how the Guardian fell from grace?
Does it matter?
Let them fester or if you must read it at least enjoy the grovelling, thoroughly Middle Class, “While you are here” panhandling.
The Guardian is now owned by the deep state. The extremely highly remunerated journalists face a choice – follow the western MSM line or look for work as a blogger and good luck getting your kids through the best private schools money can.