10 June 2019 — The Rutherford Institute
“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984
Tread cautiously: the fiction of George Orwell has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.
11 June 2019 — Asia Times
According to Statista.com, as of April 2019 Google controlled 88.47% of the world’s search engine market.
Critics hail the US tech giant’s dominant algorithmic control of web searches as a ‘Googlemocracy’
11 June 2019 — Global Research
The Internet was originally promoted as a completely free and uncensored mechanism for people everywhere to exchange views and communicate, but it has been observed by many users that that is not really true anymore. Both governments and the service providers have developed a taste for controlling the product, with President Barack Obama once considering a “kill switch“ that would turn off the Internet completely in the event of a “national emergency.”
8 June 2019 — WSWS
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) called a news conference on Thursday to justify its raids targeting journalists at two media organisations this week.
Police spent seven hours ransacking a News Corp political reporter’s home in Canberra on Tuesday, and eight hours poring over and seizing files at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Sydney headquarters on Wednesday.
8 June 2019 — Mint Press
Given the Trust Project’s rich-get-richer impact on the online news landscape, it is not surprising to find that it is funded by a confluence of tech oligarchs and powerful forces with a clear stake in controlling the flow of news.
5 June 2019 — Global Research
“What’s gone on this morning sends clear and dangerous signals to journalists and newsrooms across Australia. This will chill public interest reporting.” — News Corp Australia spokesperson, The West Australian, June 4, 2019
These are dark times for journalists and publishers. It did not seem coincidental that Annika Smethurst, a News Corp journalist and political affairs editor, would be a target of an Australian Federal Police warrant. Chelsea Manning, courtesy of a ruling by Judge Anthony Trenga, remains in federal custody in the United States. Julian Assange is facing decline in the maximum security abode that is Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom.
5 June 2019 — WSWS
Over the past 24 hours, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) have carried out two raids targeting separate media organisations, for their publication of articles exposing government spying plans and war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan.
Thousands of internal ABC emails being gone through by the AFP [source: Twitter @TheLyonsDen]
5 June 2019 — Caitlin Johnson
The Australian Federal Police have conducted two raids on journalists and seized documents in purportedly unrelated incidents in the span of just two days.
5 June 2019 — Consortium News
Less than two months after the arrest of journalist Julian Assange, and two weeks after his indictment under the Espionage Act, emboldened governments have sent the police after journalists who’ve challenged the state. Joe Lauria reports.
By Joe Lauria
in Sydney, Australia
Special to Consortium News
5 June 2019 — Open Rights Group
Join us Monday 17 June at Goldsmith’s University of London for a talk by Open Rights Group’s Executive Director Jim Killock about the Government’s new plan to address “online harms” on social media and other online platforms.
2 June 2019 — Caitlin Johnson
UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer has said that on the 31st of May he gave video interviews with both Sky News and the BBC on his findings that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the victim of psychological torture. As of tis writing, footage of those interviews is nowhere to be found.
28 May 2019 — WSWS
On Sunday, polling day in the European elections, the largest Facebook group associated with the “yellow vest” protests in France, with more than 350,000 members, was frozen so that members could not publish or share information in it.
