CloudFlare Involved With UN-Affiliated Org’s Effort to Censor the Internet (UPDATE)

Some of you might know CloudFlare — whose description on Google reads:

Turns out they declared war on #GamerGate back in March:

That was only the third email ever in the mailing list’s existence. As you can see, at  the bottom, it has a link to the GamerGate Wiki entry — which we all at TheRalphRetort know has been nothing less than a feud. The talk page of the article includes the recent accusation:

There is no question that it is a terrorist organization — it is observably organized and its notably operations have been promulgation of highly visible threats to harm women in computing, clearly intended to deter other women from pursuing work in the field.

— MarkBernstein

Michael Nelson then sent another link to the list right away, with nothing in it but a link to a Christian Science Monitor article on how to beat bullies online. An excerpt from that article:

Jack Sm Kee, the manager of the Women’s Rights Programme at the Association for Progressive Communications responded back:

—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1

Thanks for this Michael. I think you may be right that focussing on
something specific at this point could be really helpful. And there
has also been a lot of interest and recognition in this area of work,
so this BPF could also really act as a platform to consolidate some of
the work around this.

It’s also really good to hear the work that is being done in
countering DDOs attacks. This is not as well researched as far as we
are aware of, so it would be good to see how this impacts on
addressing online violence issues.

We (APC) just launched a significant research in 7 countries on this
subject, and find that in general, there are 3 kinds of threats:

a) Hate speech targetted on gender and sexuality, which is also the
most well documented and visible forms
b) Sexualised blackmail or defamation, through the use of private
videos and photographs, actual or doctored
c) Online harassment and stalking, which often results in direct
physical violence

Some of the issues that come up are:
– – Lack of recognition that these are part of the broader definition of
violence against women
– – Lack of laws, or where existing laws could be used, the first issue
acts as a major stumbling block in legal redress (capacity, awareness,
resources)
– – Jurisdictional problems when content, actors, platforms and
infrastructure are in many different places
– – Lack of clarity around roles of internet intermediaries in
responding to violence that takes place on their platforms

It would be really great to have a conversation around how to respond
to some of these. The research I mentioned is located here:
http://bit.ly/vawonline

Who else do you think we can invite into this discussion?

I have asked Ben Blink from Google to participate, or to identify the
right person in the company to do so, and have also invited Andy
(forgot his last name, need to dig up from my cards) from Facebook.
I’ll ask Eugene Yip as well from Twitter, but not sure if he is the
right person.

How about governments who have taken pro-active steps in this area of
work? I know Myanmar just drafted a law to tackle online violence, and
US has several laws around ‘revenge porn’, and Philippines has an
interesting take on looking at cyber trafficking. The Australian and
Canadian gov I think also recently undertook some research in this
area. And for intergovernmental, ITU’s broadband commission has
recently indicated interest in this area, as has UN Women.

Maybe as a next step, we can draft out a call to participate, and then
map out the process? Will also get more insight from the next BPF
coordination meeting, which is currently being planned.

Thanks again, and looking forward to thoughts from others in this space.

jac
– ———————————
Jac sm Kee
Manager, Women’s Rights Programme
Association for Progressive Communications
www.apc.org | www.takebackthetech.net | erotics.apc.org
Jitsi: jacsmk | Skype: jacsmk | Twitter: @jhybe

Michael responded yet again:

You have clearly done a lot of deep thinking on the issue. In my
experience, getting the right frame gets you halfway to the solution
(although that may not be the case here–we have some high cultural
hurdles to overcome).

My colleague at CloudFlare, Heather West, has mentioned some
interesting experts and writers working on these issues.

In the US, much of the law enforcement activity is happening at the
state level. Almost 20 states have passed laws against revenge porn,
which is easy to define and explain.

We might want to involve someone who can discuss where laws against
hate speech might collide with the First Amendment in the USA (e.g
ACLU). An expert in policing pirated material online might also
provide interesting insights.

Mike

I called Michael and attempted to ask him a few questions. He didn’t respond to my email after he offered to set up an interview for Monday.

Sadly, it’s not only CloudFlare that is mucking around in the business of turning the internet into a safe space for feminists — our good pals at Disney have contributed to the upcoming IGF report report.

As an aside to this article, check out my 5 minute video for the scoop on Disney’s involvement with the IGF:

 

UPDATE: An anon on 8chan did some digging and found out more about these “political hires” by CloudFlare…

Board chair Dierdre Mulligan is a member of the Global Network Initiative which appears to have been tapped to spread disinformation about GamerGate.