Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The time has arrived!

Dear readers

Censorship on Internet has just been voted. There is one article that lists all the prohibitions on any media including Internet. There is a translation with a mention of appropriate past posts that could be considered violations according to the censors, such as the Golinger tart. (1)  Let's start first with the offenses this blog has and will make again.

1. To start or promote hate and intolerance for religious reasons, political or sexual differences, for racism or xenofobia.

Am I to understand that criticizing Iran fundamentalism, their stoning of women, their hanging of gays is a demonstration of religious intolerance on my part?

2.  Incite or promote the apology to delinquency.

Are historical comparisons, frequent in this blog, to be questioned?  Criticizing the delinquency of the regime is included?  Because let's be clear about this: if you support a noted corrupt official you are violating that item.  Heard that Aporrea?

3.  Constitute pro war propaganda

So, if I congratulate the Colombian government on their operations against the FARC I could find myself in jail?  If I support operations against the Taliban I am promoting war?

4. Create restlessness in society or perturb public order

If the opposition organizes a march and that I support it and that I defend the, say, students that defended themselves against police brutality, am I promoting the perturbation of public order?  If I report that there is no milk or flour on the shelves, am I promoting perturbation of public order?  The newspapers can report food scarcity but can a blog say so?  Can a tweet report where food is available and thus generate a stampede through massive retweeting?

5.  Do not recognize the authorities legitimately constituted

When I list three representatives as accusing them of promoting a legal coup d'etat, am I violating that item?  When I say that Rafael Ramirez is a crook, am I attempting against the security of the nation?

6.  Lead to homicide

Even that one I cannot escape because if I write that I wish that Chavez or Cilia Flores end up in jail to rot for their sins I am actually exposing them to homicide!  at least in notoriously infamous Venezuelan jails.

7.  Lead to or promote the non-compliance of the current legal order

This is perhaps the worst one because promoting a mere boycott becomes already a crime!!!!!!  Even suggesting the call for a constitutional assembly becomes as of today a crime!!!!!!!!!  This is the catch 22 because if calling for a constitutional assembly happens and such an assembly is elected then it would subvert the current order and as such is a thought in the future crime, or something of the sort.  You can be sure that the Cuban advisors will find a way to use this item #7 widely against web pages, blogs et al.

Thus the time has arrived, censorship of Internet is here.  Now, needless to say that I have not the vaguest intention to abide by these illegal rules that I do not recognize (which as of now makes me already a criminal).   However I need to start seriously to think about proxies, codes etc...  and I will need help from readers.  More on that later, but this post for the time being to let you know that censorship has arrived in Internet, and the worse kind because before I am punished it will be the net provider that will be punished first and thus the regime forces the providers to become censors, a hallmark of totalitarian regimes, forced informing.....  The cowardice of this regime is for all to see.

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1) The Spanish version in the voted draft unless some last minute changes were made.

1. Inciten o promuevan el odio y la intolerancia por razones religiosas, políticas,por diferencia de género, por racismo o xenofobia.
2. Inciten o promuevan y/o hagan apología al delito.
3. Constituyan propaganda de Guerra
4. Fomenten zozobra en la ciudadanía o alteren el orden público.
5. Desconozcan a las autoridades legítimamente constituidas.
6. Induzcan al homicidio.
7. Inciten o promuevan el incumplimiento del ordenamiento jurídico vigente

20 comments:

  1. Daniel, it had to come to this. We all knew that the regime was not democratic, but I guess even the worse apologists can not be blind to the fact that freedom of speech has died in Venezuela. By the way, follow this link http://tiny.cc/3438x, I have used Vidalia for a couple of years now and it is effective and can not be traced

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  2. By the way, and with your permission of our host, I think you should follow his twitter account @danielduquedal. I got a feeling that it will become more important now and harder to censure by the government.
    If you want,(shameless plugin) you can follow me too @LibertadEsVida

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  3. And to think you guys were all happy about the opposition getting more than a third of the congress.

    Chavez and his groupies propelled their shit towards the fan in blazing speed and it will hit the fan.

    It's time to buy shares of oil companies drilling in Colombia.

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  4. Roger4:06 AM

    I don't think that translating local news published in the the Venezuelan press in the Venezuelan Crillio Dialect or Patois as we would call it in French is a crime. It is a service. I gave up using Standard Castilano (the Kings Spanish) translator programs a longtime ago. Hell, even Venezuelans need to use a dictionary http://www.llanera.com/diccionario/?categoria=50 for some local dialects. Also, each story needs a lot of explanation for us Gringos and even more for Francophones! One reason for this is the newspapers are very careful with their words, as in vague, to the point of being confusing if you don't know what they are talking about.The simple rule is all I know is what I read in the papers.

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  5. metodex5:15 AM

    guys,you know when the hip was the nuclear power plant facility?
    everyone said it wouldn't happen and it probably wont for another 30 years.

    What are the capabilities of the chavez administration to actually put a large scale censorship campaign on the run?

    Please,this is in no way a rethorical question. Can somebody with some knowledge explain a bit?
    Thank you! :)

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  6. 1979 Boat People5:23 AM

    Iran 2009, Belarus 2010 and Venezuela 2012. Be prepared.

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  7. metodex

    this is not about chavez censoring internet, it is about creating crimes to jail me. that is, as far as they care my blog can even remain on the web as long as i stop writing becasue i am in jail or something.

    this is all about creating new crimes to prosecute political opposition.....

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  8. Daniel is exactly correct. The idea is to make sure that everyone is guilty of something. That way, they can easily manipulate the population. It works too. Especially when your friends, neighbors, and even your own family may be rewarded for denouncing you... and they will... for ideology or just extra rations.

    And this is the true evil of these types of systems.

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  9. Charly8:34 AM

    I would not make too much of it. They are so freaking corrupt and incompetent, they will move to another interest shortly, same as saving the damnificados, just wait another month or so. What a pile of XXI century socialist crap (socialist of the fascist variety).

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  10. Karl and Daniel,

    I agree that this is a dictatorship and I am one of the few who saw it coming from day one....and even before.

    However the restraint on freedom of speech while bad, is not anywhere near as bad as in Belarus, where as soon as you step into the airport you can palpably feel the severe repression.There is absolute silence everywhere.Hotels and schools have spies on every floor and nobody can discuss the government in public.

    Venezuelans have had a democracy,albeit a short one, and Venezuelans are quite chatty and speak their minds.It would be impossible for Chavez to control all of that at least in the foreseeable future.

    However, I do think where Daniel makes a good point is that these laws makes it possible for Chavez to attack anyone at anytime, so that targeted voices can be eliminated even though the rest keep chatting away.That way it will look like freedom of speech is still in tact but he makes sure that the more powerful voices are silenced.

    It is possible that later on in the game that even smaller voices peter out.Who knows?

    He will say that he is allowing freedom of speech but that he is only targeting those who really abuse, lie or cause problems for others.

    Most foreigners who visit Venezuela will still see Venezuelans chatting away and will think there is at least relative free speech, if not total freedom of speech.

    Chavez is Machiavellian to the highest degree.When dealing with him we have to turn our minds into powerful tactical weapons, beam high arc lamps onto the problems in order to discover the weak points of his strategy.

    As long as we keep looking at problems after the fact instead of before the fact, we are doomed.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Well ... anything we can do to help RE proxies... I notices Runruns.es is "es" as are some other blogs.

    I wonder what happened to the single internet entry through Cuba gambit? Too obvious or financial interests?

    I'm guessing after this flurry of repressive laws and the obviating of electoral results, it's time to seriously reconsider the calculous of a peaceful transition (am I breaking the law?) in 2012. By peaceful I mean the government's peaceful acquiescence. I have found the Venezuelan opposition to be about as peaceful as they come.

    Will the FAN have just enough self worth and power left to force Chavez to respect the electoral results? Can the US afford to go without Venezuelan oil? General strike?

    The opposition has shown it can secure the vote numbers as accurately as the computers. Does Chavez suspend elections? I really don't think that he can even consider losing despite the fact that the PSUV will still be the majority party in the Assembly. What would a Chavez out of power do? Is this where the real sabotaging begins? Does Raul C. really want him in Cuba? Is he sitting on 100s of million of $s locked away in Andorra?

    Anyhow, I'm sure you have loads of contacts but I am in Spain if that helps...

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  12. vitro roma

    i was happy? please, remind me where...

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  13. gabriel

    no, i do not have that many "contacts" though from past experience i know that the readers of this blog are an extraordinary resource (we could have raised thousand of dollars for Globovison if I had been paypal organized).

    the thing is that i need first to figure out what is it that i need and then submit a proposal to the readers of this blog. for example i am not concerned about the ability of the regime to close up blogger. however they could try to catch my password to try to erase the whole thing. so i need to start by backing up the blog in a different site, with a different security system that i access through a third party outside of the country.

    but more on that later.

    meanwhile boooh! on you for violating the new law!

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  14. Ojalá Daniel, puedas anexar la traducción, si decides me avisas. De todos modos voy a relacionarlo en mi blog.
    Abrazos

    ReplyDelete
  15. Here's a link to work around censorship that was on La Bicha's Twitter. Pretty comprehensive.

    https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BwaPBJj4aJisYTAxMjgwNzYtODdjNi00MWI5LThiYjEtMzk0MWYyNzQyMzAx&hl=en&authkey=CMbX7N8L

    I think that govt probably wont be able to do much in terms of filtering and blocking like in Cuba. Only because the cat is already out of the bag. If 7 million people are connected and have accounts on twitter and blogger and other domains outside Venezuela it's not likely that they can affect these. I think that Noticias24 and the like are likely to screen comments (they've already started). And they can always do an "allanamento" of your apt or business to make you miserable and tthen fine you and tie you up with court dates. You do make a good point about identity theft. Maybe Blogger has a solution for that. They're pretty clever.

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  16. Daniel,

    I am sure you have a plethora of lawyers to assist you. Let me add my name to the list, with qualification not just in Venezuela, but in the US and the UK, in case it comes to that. I wish......I love to take on the regime in any way I can. BTW this post makes me a criminal too, I s'pose.

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  17. Anonymous12:18 AM

    Don't give the US Republican Party any ideas.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Boludo Tejano1:32 AM

    Anonymous said...
    Don't give the US Republican Party any ideas.

    If so, the backward Republicans will have to do some catching up with the “progressive” Democrats. Here is Charles Lloyd , Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission. In his book Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America, he wrote:

    At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies. [p 20 as quoted in Newsbusters]….
    Thus, the purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance [p 21. as quoted in Newsbusters].

    Charles Lloyd has this to say about Venezuela:

    "In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela.
    "The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country.
    "And we've had complaints about this ever since."


    Sounds as if Charles Lloyd could get a job at Miraflores if the gig with the Obama Administration doesn’t work out.
    Very interesting that a pro-Chavista member of the Obama Administration does not have a sanguine view of free speech.
    Put two and two together. Viva la "democratic revolucion."

    ReplyDelete
  19. just-somebody3:17 AM

    hey daniel, tor project is an excellent resource to surf the web without being exposed to possible rojo-rojito network sniffers and/or content filtering that could be already in place. if you go that way, make sure you understand at least basics of the underlying technology so you'll know what it's actually protecting you from. tor project has a nice FAQ on their website. vidalia seems like a good software, and it's actually a GUI to control tor. the document linked by gabriel is a nice place to start reading about all this.

    as for your digital information in general, you should consider keeping your PC as secure as possible. malware (trojans/worms/viruses/and-the-like) could potentially allow your computer to be infected and compromised, therefore allowing somebody else to control and gather information from it remotely... the safer your computer is, the better of your information (and you) will be.

    as for password, you should consider using (very) strong passwords and ONLY use https to access websites. also secure your password recovery questions and improve the password of your email as much as you can. if your blogger password can be recovered using a weakly-protected email account or answering some easy recovery questions, then so much for your blogger password security... right?

    the stronger and longer the password, the x times harder it'll be to crack. use a password manager (keepass is freeware & open source, very good) and create big +20-digits passwords for your blogger access... like this one: uj$=3=^HFjPCT%@SM@bv you don't need to remember it, that's what the password manager will do for you. using https only to access critical websites is crucial... if you send your super-secure password over an http website, it'll be really easy to read by your ISP (or some cuban operators) and it'll be reused at will.

    this is by no means an extensive list of things you need to be aware of, just some stuff for you to consider. information security these days can be challenging to understand and practice, but there is plenty of information around on the internet and plenty of free and great software you can use to protect you... and keep up the good work...!

    à bientôt...

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  20. Boludo Tejano,

    I find it interesting that nobody commented on your quite pertinent point.

    ReplyDelete

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