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US Homeland Security Will Start Collecting Social Media Info on All Immigrants & naturalized citizens October 18th

September 26, 2017 By administrator

By Matt Novak,

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is expanding the kinds of information that it collects on immigrants to include social media information and search results. The new policy, which covers immigrants who have obtained a green card and even , will take effect on October 18th.

First spotted by Buzzfeed News, the announcement from the Trump regime was published in the Federal Register. The new policy will not only allow DHS to collect information about an immigrant’s Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts, but it also mentions all “search results.” It’s not immediately clear if that means the agency will have access to things such as Google search histories nor is it clear how that would be obtained.

The new policy includes 12 points of expansion on what DHS is allowed to collect, but numbers 5 and 11 seem to be the most alarming in their ability to reach inside the digital lives of immigrants to the US and anyone who interacts with those immigrants.

From the announcement (emphasis mine):

The Department of Homeland Security, therefore, is updating the “Department of Homeland Security/U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection-001 Alien File, Index, and National File Tracking System of Records notice to:

[…]

(5) expand the categories of records to include the following: country of nationality; country of residence; the USCIS Online Account Number; social media handles, aliases, associated identifiable information, and search results; and the Department of Justice (DOJ), Executive Office for Immigration Review and Board of Immigration Appeals proceedings information

[…]

(11) update record source categories to include publicly available information obtained from the internet, public records, public institutions, interviewees, commercial data providers, and information obtained and disclosed pursuant to information sharing agreements;

The term “information sharing agreements” isn’t defined in the policy, but it could conceivably cover both the types of surveillance agreements that the US has with countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand under Five Eyes, as well as the agreements that DHS has with companies like Google and internet service providers.

As Buzzfeed points out, collecting this kind of information would also have a dramatic impact on every single person that interacts with immigrants to the US, since it would seemingly make all of their conversations on social media subject to surveillance. In the interest of full disclosure, yours truly is married to a US green card holder, so not only will my wife be subjected to this new rule, conceivably I will as well.

The Department of Homeland Security’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment. We will update this post when we hear back.

Souce: https://gizmodo.com/us-homeland-security-will-start-collecting-social-media-1818777094?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Gizmodo_facebook

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: homeland security, Immigrants., social Media

Turkey targets 10,000 in social media probe

December 27, 2016 By administrator

Turkey is investigating 10,000 people on suspicion of using social media to support terrorism, BBC News reports, citing the country’s interior ministry.
They are accused of insulting government officials online, or what the ministry called “terror-related activity” on the internet.
The ministry said the fight against terrorism was being carried out “with determination” on social media.
The authorities have held 3,710 people for questioning in the last six months.
Of those, 1,656 have been formally arrested and 84 are still being questioned.

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: probe, social Media, Turkey

Kardashian 160,000,000 fans have taken to social media to express their support for the reality TV star. after robbery

October 4, 2016 By administrator

kim-kardashian-supportSocial media shows sympathy for Kim Kardashian after robbery

After Kim Kardashian was robbed at gunpoint in her Paris hotel by masked men who stole some $10 million worth of jewelry, her 160,000,000 fans have taken to social media to express their support for the reality TV star.

Social media shows sympathy for Kim Kardashian after robbery
160,000,000 fans have taken to social media to express their support. pic.twitter.com/eYnl5VgaRx

— Wally Sarkeesian (@gagrulenet) October 4, 2016

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Kim Kardashian, social Media, support

Trump won the debate on social media

September 27, 2016 By administrator

trump-win-poolNumerous polls conducted on social media by news organizations, including Deutsche Welle, Trump came out the outright victor.

Other news organizations, such as CNBC, Time magazine and ABC News, also saw similar results on their social media polls.

 

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: Clinton, social Media, Trump, Us-Election

Turkey Erdogan and social media: use and abuse

July 20, 2016 By administrator

turkey blocks(DW) After using social media to publicly quash the coup, Turkey’s government is cracking down on news sites and purging state institutions again. Here is how censorship works in the country – and how Turks react to it.

After recent terrorist attacks, Turkey’s authorities have generally been restricting access to the most important social media platforms through throttling. An organization called Turkey Blocks has been monitoring this closely over eight different crises including the terrorist attacks that have occurred since September 2015. Turkey Blocks says that these restrictions can be observed for an average of 12 to 14 hours following a crisis.

After the coup attempt, the social media block was also observed:

“We were hearing the jets here in Istanbul and monitoring at the same time. It was pretty crazy,” Alp Toker, initiator and coordinator of Turkey Blocks, told DW.

However, this time, the block was way shorter than usual – a little less than two hours, according to Toker.

As soon as the restrictions were lifted, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched a social media blitz, sending a call to the population via different platforms, Facebook, WhatsApp, directly to their mobile phones, and through Twitter.

This tweet, asking the population to go out to airports and public squares to resist the coup, went out to his over eight million followers:

Erdogan also contacted the TV station CNN Turk through the video chat app FaceTime. The president was shown sitting in front of a simple curtain on the chat screen of an iPhone in the hand of the news host, Hande Firat: “First my hands were shaking,” she told the German newspaper “Bild.”

“That was extraordinary,” said Alp Toker. “He usually likes his appearances to be very formal.” The improvised setting added to the sense of emergency, all while creating “another milestone in digital messaging’s growing influence in shaping world events,” wrote “The Globe and Mail” media reporter James Bradshaw.

“I have to congratulate their promptness that night. That’s probably the quickest response the government issued to anything you can imagine,” Istanbul-based social media strategist Serdar Paktin told DW.

As thousands of Erdogan supporters answered the call, they made their own use of social media. “There were remarkable Periscope live stream videos showing the extent of the damage. That influenced more people to take to the streets,” said Toker.

In comparison, “The soldiers did not have a well developed mass-communications strategy.” They simply stormed major TV stations, “the old-fashioned way,” Erkan Saka, lecturer at Bilgi University’s Communication department, told DW.

How Turks react to the blocks

The Turkish president is renowned for condemning social media when he fears that it could serve the purposes of protestors. Back in 2013, during the Gezi Park protests, Erdogan called Twitter “the worst menace to society.”

However, the Turkish president joined the platform himself in 2009 and uses it regularly – or at least, his communication team does. Erdogan himself has always declared he doesn’t have a Twitter account, according to Paktin.

The Turkish president has the same contradictory approach with Facebook. Yet Turks are “so used to these double standards that no one complains anymore,” said Saka.

“Turkey is a country of paradox, dilemma and oxymoron,” added Paktin.

Internet users in Turkey know how to circumvent the blocks using VPNs – virtual private networks – or software allowing people to surf the net anonymously, such as Tor. “Most of the Turks are quite knowledgeable,” explained Saka. He noticed that ordinary people have already started using Telegram, or Signal, which is an encrypted voice messaging service that was recommended by Edward Snowden, instead of WhatsApp.

This is what internet restrictions in Turkey look like

However, a large part of the Turkish population has not bothered finding alternative ways to access those sites, explains Toker. Many tourists looking for information on Friday night didn’t know how to circumvent the blocks either. In such cases, this is what restricted access looks like:

Turkey Blocks was the first organization to prove through concrete data that there is a form of throttling going on.

Their monitoring has also demonstrated that YouTube was added to the list of restricted sites only last month: It was down after the terrorist attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport in June. “It’s a new shift in their policy,” said Toker, adding that YouTube videos following the terror attacks in Ankara in March might have influenced this decision.

Toker also said that these blocks are “not centrally controlled, NSA-style.” Although these directives are given by the country’s Telecommunications Directorate, TiB, each internet service implements these restrictions individually, he explained.

Censorship and institutional purges post-coup attempt

After the attempted coup, the government appears to be further cracking down on freedom of expression. TiB has blocked access to some 20 Turkish websites, according to different sources. Once again, alternatives allow many Turks to access to these sites, but the drop in readership can “affect the advertising income of these sites,” Saka pointed out.

Source: http://www.dw.com/en/erdogan-and-social-media-use-and-abuse/a-19413205

Filed Under: News Tagged With: abuse, Erdogan, social Media, Turkey, use

Social media backs Turkish MP’s threat to throw her shoe

August 25, 2014 By administrator

By Tulay Cetingulec
Contributor, al monitor

Aylin-Nazliaka-shoe-aylinnazliakacomtrAylin Nazliaka holds the heel of her shoe in parliament in a photo on her webpage that has a link to the “Slipper’s coming” Twitter account. (photo by http://www.aylinnazliaka.com.tr/)

In many regions in Turkey, mothers exasperated with a naughty child will take off a slipper and raise it menacingly toward the miscreant, shouting, “Look, the slipper’s coming!” That is the first warning. If the child — typically a boy — fails to stop misbehaving, the slipper soon flies through the air. This “slipper disciplining” usually bears fruit, with the kid either running away or getting hit and calming down. More often than not, the first warning suffices and the child behaves before the slipper takes off.

A similar scene unfolded last week in an unlikely place — the Turkish parliament. Aylin Nazliaka, one of the most active female lawmakers of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), was making a speech about violence against women in Turkey when she got exasperated with colleagues from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) who sought to sabotage her speech, hurling taunts of her being a “cheapo” and “having Botox.”

“The devil is tempting me to take off a shoe and throw it at you!” an incensed Nazliaka shouted. Yet, the experienced boys of yesteryear ignored the warning and went on with their taunting. “But you are not worth even a shoe,” Nazliaka replied before leaving the rostrum amid a hail of insults.

Nazliaka’s speech on gender discrimination was no doubt a stinging one. “We have come to a point where [the country] discusses what women should wear, what color their lipstick should be, whether pregnant women should go out in the streets, whether women’s laughing out loud is immoral or not and even whether women and men should perform the folk dances together. Even mixed-sex education is being questioned. And you are responsible for all this!” Nazliaka said, shouting at the AKP benches. “Three women are killed every day [in Turkey] and violence against women is up 1,400%, remember? The murderers are emboldened by those who attempt to dictate women how they should behave. Don’t look too far, it’s you I’m talking about! You are the ones emboldening those murderers!” she declared.

Nazliaka’s two-minute parliamentary speech reverberated for days in the media and among politicians, including President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Don’t throw that shoe, you’ll need it,” Erdogan said, adding that the lawmaker’s remarks reflected her low “quality and breeding.”

Nazliaka retorted in even harsher terms. “He [Erdogan] would have certainly preferred a shoebox instead of a shoe. Had I thrown a wristwatch, his MPs would have leaped to grab it in the air,” she said, referring to a probe into alleged large-scale corruption among AKP members and cronies, including a bank manager who stashed millions of dollars in shoeboxes at home and a minister accused of accepting an ultra-expensive watch as a bribe.

Nazliaka’s speech took the social media by storm. Twitter users, mostly women, lent the lawmaker support with hundreds of tweets under a hashtag called “slipper’s coming.” In a message reflecting how deep-rooted the “slipper discipline” tradition is, one user tweeted, “I’m the grandchild of a grandma who never missed the target.”

The messages came complete with photos of women’s shoes of all styles, colors and sizes, including the now-famous high heels Nazliaka wore during the stormy parliamentary session. In the meantime, “slipper throwing” games hit the Internet and some shrewd footwear companies took the opportunity to advertise their products.

In fact, shoe-throwing — an Arab gesture of insult — has become a popular expression of protest globally since the Arab Spring. The world had first become acquainted with it after Saddam Hussein’s fall in Iraq when it watched Baghdad residents hit the strongman’s toppled monument with shoes and slippers.

In Turkey, however, things are a bit different, with the slipper used as an instrument of taming mischievous children. Ibrahim Ethem Basaran, a prominent scholar and an expert of Anatolian culture at Ankara University Educational Sciences Faculty, told Al-Monitor: “Slipper throwing in Turkey is not an act of insult or violence. A slipper is being thrown only to stop a naughty kid, when there is nothing else to throw around. Mothers would take a slipper and throw it, but not before warning ‘Look, slipper’s coming.’ The underlying intention is to discipline the child, but neither the slipper nor beating has a place in education. No teacher would throw a shoe at a child. The act is limited to exasperated mothers who are left helpless. The kids themselves would not care much. They would laugh and run away.”

In comments on Nazliaka’s behavior, Basaran said: “The lawmaker is likely to have witnessed slipper throwing in her childhood and remembered it while speaking in parliament. Just like a helpless mother, she could have felt the urge to throw a shoe.”

Despite the outpouring of support on social media, Nazliaka’s fury changed nothing in the parliamentary debate where the episode unfolded. True to style, AKP lawmakers voted en masse to reject an opposition proposal that would have enabled victims of violence staying in women’s shelters to cast their votes in elections. Anything about the session but the bill’s purpose made the headlines. No one knew why a basic democratic right was voted down. And Nazliaka, who was the lawmaker who submitted the proposal, wound up discussing her shoes rather than her bill.

Some 2,500 Turkish women currently accommodated in shelter houses are unable to vote on the grounds of “safety” since no legal arrangement exists on how they can cast their votes. Those victims of violence will be considered nonexistent in the general elections in 2015, just as they were in the municipal and presidential elections this year.

Though the bill was voted down, the click-clack of Turkish women’s heels reverberated across the world as many international media outlets covered the story and foreign women voiced their support on social media.

Speaking to Al-Monitor, Nazliaka herself sounded optimistic. “The shoe became a symbol around the world. Those who represent the dark mentality of medieval ages are seeking to push women out from all realms [of public life], but they will continue to hear the click-clack of our heels just everywhere. They will see how this will grow into a women’s revolution, taking its first steps in Turkey and spreading across the region. Turkish women are capable of moving mountains,” she said.

“I was greatly encouraged by the scale of reaction the incident generated on social media and expressions of support from all over the world. Female cyclists from Poland, for instance, posted a collective picture with their shoes, saying they were ready to come to Turkey in support. There is support pouring out from all over Europe and the foreign press is reporting the issue. An impulse that popped up as a motherly relic had a truly big impact,” she said.

Tulay Cetingulec
Contributor, Turkey Pulse

Tulay Cetingulec is a Turkish journalist who has worked for Sabah and other Turkish newspapers and magazines

Filed Under: Articles Tagged With: social Media, throw shoes, Turkish mp

Turkey hijacks servers in social media crackdown

March 31, 2014 By administrator

Turkey has started hijacking net addresses as it steps up attempts to block access to social media, the BBC reported.

Turkey-Hijacks-ServicesAddresses belonging to Google, Level 3 and OpenDNS have all been hijacked by order of the Turkish government.

The hijack means that people using those addresses to reach Twitter or YouTube can no longer get through.

Net monitoring firms said the hijack was “concerning” and would let the government log who was trying to get round its controls.

The addresses that have been hijacked are for domain name servers – computers which list where websites are on the net.

One of the first ways Turkey blocked access to Twitter and YouTube was by getting ISPs to stop their domain name servers directing people to the two sites. It took action against the microblogging site and video service after both were used to leak information embarrassing to the government.

The government said it also imposed the blocks because the sites were spreading misinformation in the run-up to local elections which took place over the weekend.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: hijacks, social Media, Turkey

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