Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with censorship

What is the publication history of Philip Agee's Inside the Company?

history is a weapon — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:53:49 -0800

What is the publication history of Philip Agee's Inside the Company: CIA Diary? Are European editions vastly different? Or, more to the point, are American versions censored? Is there a resource for looking all this up?

Hosted wysiwyg web publishing that allows adult content?

zeek321 — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 12:48:11 -0800

Are there any hosted publishing platforms where a) I can do some wysiwyg fiddling with the design and b) post content that descends into Dan Savage fetish-too-far territory? Do I have to self-host? I'd like to use something like weebly or squarespace. But their TOS's don't allow adult content.

Criteria and non-criteria: I don't mind paying. I don't need anonymity. Everything I want to do is legal in the USA, where I live. Automatic search engine pinging and SEO optimization would be ideal. I need to be able to do one click export. Being able to add a domain at a later time would be great. Pony: Live word count while editing.

I always freeze up when I have to make design choices, fiddle with CSS, pick templates, etc., so I'm trying to avoid it. Basically I want to just get a bunch of stuff up without having to censor so I can find my voice and audience. I'm doing this as a long shot to connect with interesting people, not for money. I also loathe doing admin. But, too bad for me? Do I just have to self-host on an ISP that doesn't care? There seem to be plenty.

*I see that google/blogger allows adult content, but I don't want to accidentally do something that would get my google account suspended. Nor do I want to risk opening a second google account. Other choices?

Help Me Lock It Down!

spitbull — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 04:25:26 -0800

Looking to implement the most effective reasonable set of best practices for preserving internet privacy and blocking commercial data harvesting. Seeking tips, tricks, hacks, and useful online resources. Currently, I use Firefox running AdBlock Plus, Taco/Abine/BeefTaco, and NoScript on Firefox for my primary browsing needs, along with GoogleSharing to anonymize searches. I use separate browsers for financial/ecommerce/business/medical stuff and yet a third for all social networking sites that requires a login vs. everyday surfing and searching. I keep flash and ads blocked on all my browsers. I require each browser to alert me and ask permission for each cookie it keeps (on the "business" and social networking browsers), and I flush them all by quitting the browser, re-launching, and re-logging in to all my banking/shopping/medical/employer sites using a (local) password management utility at least once a day. I have my social networking sites set to maximum privacy. I do not stay logged in to Google or Facebook or Twitter except when I need to use those tools. I regularly flush my browser caches, histories, and cookies using CCleaner. I am wary of unsecured wifi networks, and I never do any business/banking/webmail when not on a trusted network.

This took a while to set up, and to change my habits, but I am really pleased with the results. My browsing is so much faster and less cluttered without all the flash advertising, and it is a delight to see Taco's tally of all the tracking cookies and ad networks that have been rejected at the end of the day.

I am looking for suggestions to tighten down the hatches even further. Short of using Tor and PGP etc, steps I think are beyond most people's usual willingness to make the effort at privacy:

1) what are your best hacks for online (specifically web) privacy?
2) what browsers and what plugins/extensions do you use?
3) can you provide links to some up-to-date articles or discussions of this topic with practical and relatively simple solutions to keeping your browser ad-free, avoiding being tracked, and yielding as little personal information to corporate entities (or the government) as possible?

I realize there are some inherent risks you can't easily eliminate without seriously restricting your online activity or engaging in potentially nefarious activities (spoofing MAC addresses and the like). The government could always subpoena your ISP (or maybe not even need to subpoena it!) for your browsing history. A targeted search for you as an individual could yield all kinds of personal information. Facial recognition software is going to make it easier to search images in the near future, etc.

But mostly I am looking for effective and *simple* or straightforward ways to minimize your footprint, be as stealthy as reasonably possible, and deny my information as much as possible to those who would commercially exploit it. I'm asking not only for myself, but because I want to come up with a straightforward set of recommendations for my friends and colleagues who worry about this stuff all the time, but are not even tech savvy enough to install a Firefox add-on without some step-by-step guidance.

Annoyingly, a lot of these tools are not available on mobile platforms (gee, I wonder what that could be about?). So I would also be interested in specific privacy/security hacks for iPhone/iPod Touch, Android, and Nokia Symbian devices.

And finally, in general, why should I trust Chrome's security and privacy controls, since Google makes it?

TLDR: In general, how do you manage your online privacy and security if you take it seriously, and/or can you suggest up-to-date resources for learning about emerging practical solutions to harden your e-bunker.

Thank you!

Literaure about censorship?

Annabelle74 — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:46:07 -0800

I'm looking for books, poems, and plays on the topic of censorship -- but all I'm finding online is tons of lists of "banned books." Can anyone help? I'm assisting a friend with some research, and she's already got the typical titles on her list -- Farenheit 451, for example.

But does anyone know of some lesser-known titles, perhaps, of literature dealing with the topic of censorship?

Novels, short stories, poems, plays . . . any genre is fine.

What's the best CMS for this project on banned books

johnofjack — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:28:47 -0800

What's the best CMS for this project? I wanted to put together a database of books which were actually censored somewhere somehow in the U.S., preferably recently.

Drupal doesn't appeal to me anymore --I have a fair amount of experience with it but am still frequently stumped about why it is or is not doing one thing or another, and I'm consistently unimpressed with how slow it is. So I'd be surprised if Drupal is the answer to this question.

Info to store (at minimum): title, author, cover, plot summary, intended audience, dates censored, locations censored, type of censorship (e.g. removed or restricted), external references, and keywords.

The dates, locations, types of censorship, and external references should all be grouped as individual instances of censorship tied to a given book. (If you know anything about databases, I'm seeing books as a table, authors as a table, and incidents of censorship as a table, with links between incidents and books.) Authors and books would have their own interlinked pages, as would audience and types of censorship.

I'd thought of just using WordPress for this, but where I'm stumbling a bit is in making it automatically update various pages like authors and books. For instance, on a book's page I'd like it to list incidents, keep an automatic account, and possibly map locations. I'm not sure of how these things might be done in WordPress.

Is there anything set up that's not Drupal that can likely do this (even if it's WordPress and a number of plugins), or am I stuck with Drupal?

In case you're curious, the project is in response to the ALA's Banned Books Week, prompted by my belief that challenged is not the same as banned any more than bruised is the same as dead.

Web? O, Bob, ew!

msalt — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 22:06:12 -0800

First Ecommerce site: What considerations do I have for sales to other countries? (tax, censorship, ??) Or am I overthinking this? I'm opening an online store for a print magazine/ebooks/t-shirts that is occasionally risque but generally family friendly and silly (about palindromes). I'm in the USA, in a state (Oregon) with no sales tax. Do I need to worry about either tax or censorship in other countries? (I expect a lot of attention in the UK soon.) Are there certain countries I should not ship to?

Would British libel laws put me at risk for a palindrome such as "Red eel Blair -- a lame, malarial bleeder." ?

Restricting images of wounded and dying soldiers?

mortaddams — Tue, 24 May 2011 09:27:30 -0800

I have heard that during the past decade the US government began to restrict journalists from publishing images of wounded and dead soldiers, as well as coffins. The goal, arguably, is to both manipulate public perception of war and respect the privacy of soldiers. This is in contrast to the Vietnam era, when images of the dead and dying were commonly published. Are there any great websites or articles about this phenomenon? Are these restrictions still in place under the Obama administration?

Examples of art censorship?

mortaddams — Sun, 08 May 2011 09:01:41 -0800

What are the most interesting examples of art censorship from the past 20 years? I am considering how the government and public institutions shield the public from specific imagery. I am aware of the recent controversy at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington-- removing a video by David Wojnarowicz. Other examples of art censorship for sexual, political, ethical, religious, or other reasons would be most appreciated.

Help Egypt communicate

massysett — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:20:14 -0800

Egypt has apparently "shut down" their Internet. This says that they shut down DNS, which suggests that "shut down the Internet" is a bit of an overstatement and that such a thing might not be possible. Who knows more about how this "shutdown" is working and, more importantly, how can we help these people communicate?

Facebook in China

kid A — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:24:41 -0800

I am going to China for 4 weeks. How to access Facebook while there? Hello,

I know google comes up with numerous alternatives (1. VPN, 2, securitales (which seems to be a paid service), 3. other proxy networks), but it is difficult to gauge the veracity and ease of these many methods.

Has anyone gone to China recently and found something that just works?

I am a Chinese ex-pat currently travelling overseas (I am in Japan and have reliable internet). In a week I will be going to China and will stay there partially in my own lodging and partially with family there. I have my own laptop. What is the best way to access Facebook? Do I have to be concerned with any repercussions that might flow on to my relatives if I use their connections to access Facebook? (I doubt it, but I thought I'd ask.)

Is there a list of the members of congress against Wojnarowicz?

Bengston — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 06:37:46 -0800

Does anyone know where I can find a list of the ubiquitous "several conservative members of congress" who recently spoke out against the clip from David Wojnarowicz's "A Fire In My Belly" video at the National Portrait Gallery? After doing a fair bit of searching on this subject I can't seem to figure out who those members of congress were (with the exceptions of Eric cantor and Jack Kingston.) This seems like fairly bad reporting to me, I would really appreciate it if the news organizations told us who was calling for censorship...

Is there any legal danger to seeding the Wikileaks "cablegate" torrents?

qxntpqbbbqxl — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 22:35:55 -0800

Is there any legal danger to seeding the Wikileaks "cablegate" torrents? Now that the cat's out of the bag, these formerly classified documents become public domain, right?

Ethnic conflicts in China

pyrom — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 11:10:26 -0800

This-is-a-long-shot-filter: I'm just beginning to do a study of Muslims in China, a subject I find extremely interesting. Specifically, I'm looking at the Hui minority, histories of violence among Muslims in China, current ethnic tensions between the Hui and other ethnic identities, and conflict between the Hui and the Chinese government. Looking for personal accounts, opinions, and thoughts that can lead me further into research. First of all, I'm sorry for the broadness of this question, and I realize it's not terribly easy to answer. I'm not really hoping for any sort of definitive answer but just some knowledge-tidbits I can use to jump to more in-depth research. So here's reaching out to anyone who has experience with the subject- I think it'd be really neat to get some opinions, resources, articles, or first-hand accounts from the hivemind that will lead me to learning something interesting!

Some food for thought/things to comment on-

I've noticed a huge difference between Chinese news sources reporting on violence/tension and foreign sources- in a lot of the things I've read so far, Chinese journals tend to downplay conflicts that occur while other sources make them sound much more violent. What's the history of this trend? Is it improving

Some things I've already found on Metafilter:
Jumping Through Hoops
Ethnic Conflict in China

Have at it. Thanks meFi :)

How can we fight against the "1984" version of the internet?

simpleblob — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:51:00 -0800

Since every government in the world seeks information control to remain in power. The internet will eventually be tapped, censored, crippled, and/or blocked by every country. How can we fight against this, or rather, route around it? Is there another way besides voting against it, which from what I see is not working.

- Setting up a Darknet mesh network?
- Buying telcos -- converting them to non-profit/mutual?

Anyone knowledgeable please share your thoughts, greatly appreciated.

Does anyone know when the Australian Net-Filter legislation is to be put to the House of Reps?

tomargue — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:31:22 -0800

Does anyone know when the Australian Net-Filter legislation is to be put to the House of Representatives? How long does it takes for them to debate it before they vote? Then when does it go before the senate? And how long does it take for the senate to debate and vote on it?

How can I send an executable file?

dawson — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 06:45:01 -0800

How can I send an executable file, namely, the Skydur VPN software, to a friend in China (I am also in China)? Gmail does not allow this, and her options for alternatives are rather limited. As is my knowledge about these things... I have tired everything I know, and because of circumstances cannot try again for 12 hours or so, but I want to help my girlfriend install and set up a VPN...
how can I do this, using her existing programs?
I could easily do it if I were at her PC, but I am not, and won't be for a month at the least...

Of all the German days of the week, why did Wednesday get a censored name?

RedReplicant — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 06:08:55 -0800

Why is only one of the German days of the week Bowdlerized? Every day (Donnerstag, Samstag, Freitag, etc) is a reference to the old pagan religions, but for some reason Wodenstag got the axe, and is now the bland "Mittwochs." I suspect it's Christian influences, but if so, why did Freya and Thor escape censorship?

Why don't my proxies work anymore?

msbrauer — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:08:00 -0800

Why have my proxies (Privoxy and GAppProxy) suddenly quit working? I'm using an up-to-date Vista installation. I use proxies periodically to get past China's Great Firewall. In the past, a strategy of Tor (by means of Vidalia/Privoxy/Torbutton) and GAppProxy (through FoxyProxy, set up using these instructions). I never use the two at the same time, i.e. if I'm using Tor, I'm not using GAppProxy, and vice versa. When I was last in China, in July, I had been using this setup for a few months with no problems.

I've just returned to China, and after a day or two of flawless operation, both proxies have quit working. To clarify, both proxy setups manage to get past the Great Firewall and transfer data. However, within a few seconds of data transfer through the proxy, I get a message from windows stating, "Privoxy has stopped working" or "HTTP Proxy. 127.0.0.1:8000 has stopped working" in the case of GAppProxy. Privoxy is running on port 8118.

Restarting the computer or the proxies doesn't solve the problem. Running one without the other doesn't solve the problem. Is there a possibility that something other than my computer is causing the problem, perhaps new strategies used by the Great Firewall spike the proxy somehow? The proxies remain operational if they are not in use, which is to say, if I start Privoxy or GAppProxy and don't transfer data through them, the services run with no problem.

While I haven't installed any internet-using programs in the week I've been back in China, since I didn't use the proxies for two months while outside of China, I can't be sure that the problem is a result of new conditions.

How can I troubleshoot this problem?

Is 'br****s' obscene?

knapah — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:03:16 -0800

I think the UK television gameshow Countdown just beep-edited out the word 'breasts' from their broadcast. Is this mandated by law or some broadcasting code? Is there some UK 'obscenity' law that prohibits the word breasts before the watershed? This was on Channel 4(+1), so I assume it was the same in the non-timeshifted broadcast, but don't know.

Oh, and if you search youtube for countdown videos you'll find amusing examples of swear words coming up as answers, but 'breasts'?!

SSH through the AS12880 / DCI Iranian government-run firewall?

thewalrus — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:54:42 -0800

Iranian firewallfilter: How to make SSH traffic not resemble SSH traffic, when examined by a deep packet inspection device (Ellacoya, Narus, etc)? Other advice on specific types of VPN from within Iran also welcome. I've been following the news about Iranian Internet censorship for a few years now, but obviously started paying more attention in the last couple of weeks. There's two interesting papers examining AS12880 (DCI)'s Internet transit from Arbor Networks:

Iranian Traffic Engineering

Deeper Look at the Iranian Firewall

Misc:

Robtex page examining AS12880's uplinks to the world

Rense page, strange changes in Iranian Internet transit

What I'm wondering specifically is methods which can be taken to make SSH traffic look -less- like SSH traffic. Assume that a person inside Iran has root on a European-colocated FreeBSD or Linux system (or root on a VPS/Virtual Machine) running the latest OpenSSH. The sshd would of course be listening for incoming connections on a nonstandard port, it could be any port, or multiple different ports. If I remember right OpenSSH now defaults to SSH2/AES but can also use Blowfish. Are there any methods that can be used to disguise the initial SSH handshake and packet headers? Any special tricks from the client software end, assuming that the client (OSX or Linux) can run any ssh client that will compile on it?

Is VPN traffic (Cisco, or Juniper-Netscreen SSL-VPN) less likely to trigger flags or get blocked than SSH?

Does anyone have firsthand or secondhand experience of Windows Remote Desktop / RDP 5.1 being blocked from within Iran?

Movie Scenes, As Seen on TV

joshrholloway — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:37:52 -0800

Have any movies ever filmed scenes during regular production that were meant specifically for the purpose of being used in a TV airing? Pretty simple question, I think. I couldn't find an answer on Google. I'm thinking of pivotal scenes in films that just could not be shown on television with any reasonable amount of editing, so the director shot a "self-censored" version of the scene meant to be included in TV airings of the film. What about additional dialogue or ADR specifically made for TV airings? I highly doubt either of these exist, but I'm just curious if the hivemind knows something I don't. Thanks!

Google's services don't work in a specific way

msbrauer — Sun, 24 May 2009 05:30:10 -0800

Why aren't most google services working for me and why do the error pages look identical in firefox, chrome, and IE8? For about a week most google services have stopped working for me. Oddly, I get identical error messages that look like this in all three browsers on my computer (firefox, chrome, and IE8 in Windows Vista) as well as on Mac with Safari in OSX. By identical, I mean that the layout, font, and wording is exactly the same. I am in China, so this may be related to the Great Firewall, but I don't think so. As a comparison, here's an image of the error page I get when trying to view youtube (which is currently blocked in China): firefox, chrome, IE8. While the error is the same in those 3 screenshots, the browsers display them differently.

This behavior happens with all www.google.com/* services that I can remember, but gmail (www.gmail.com redirecting to mail.gmail.com) doesn't exhibit the problem.

Help me find a Grass-Mud Horse t-shirt on the Web!

killdevil — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 14:11:43 -0800

Apropos of the recent MeFi front-page post concerning Grass-Mud Horses: could the Mandarin-speakers in the audience help me locate a place on the Web to buy a t-shirt featuring said animal? I haven't had any luck locating such an item on the English-language Web, but I'm sure there must be one for sale somewhere.

N***** With Hats

shmegegge — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:51:53 -0800

Is the movie Fear of A Black Hat normally censored? I watched the movie over streaming Netflix the other day, and noticed that it is HEAVILY censored, using cartoon noises to bleep out the words and cartoon hats to block their mouths and other objectionable material. The censoring was clearly a big joke, but it was so prevalent that I wonder if the movie was originally censored. Did I happen to watch a version that had been censored for TV or something, or was the movie always censored like this?