90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Evil Intentions...

In wake of Shutterstock’s Chinese censorship, American companies need to relearn American values

It’s among the most iconic images of the last few decades — a picture of an unknown man standing before a line of tanks during the protests in 1989 in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. In just one shot, the photographer, Jeff Widener, managed to convey a society struggling between the freedoms of individual citizens and the heavy hand of the Chinese militarized state.

It’s also an image that few within China’s “great firewall” have access to, let alone see. For those who have read 1984, it can almost seem as if “Tank Man” was dropped into a memory hole, erased from the collective memory of more than a billion people.

By now, it’s well-known that China’s search engines like Baidu censor such political photography. Regardless of the individual morality of their decisions, it’s at least understandable that Chinese companies with mostly Chinese revenues would carefully hew to the law as set forth by the Chinese Communist Party. It’s a closed system after all.

What we are learning though is that it isn’t just Chinese companies that are aiding and abetting this censorship. It’s Western companies too. And Western workers aren’t pleased that they are working to enforce the anti-freedom policies in the Middle Kingdom.

Take Shutterstock, which has come under great fire for complying with China’s great firewall. As Sam Biddle described in The Intercept last month, the company has been riven internally between workers looking to protect democratic values, and a business desperate to expand further in one of the world’s most dynamic countries. From Biddle:

Shutterstock’s censorship feature appears to have been immediately controversial within the company, prompting more than 180 Shutterstock workers to sign a petition against the search blacklist and accuse the company of trading its values for access to the lucrative Chinese market.

Those petitions have allegedly gone nowhere internally, and that has led employees like Stefan Hayden, who describes nearly ten years of experience at the company as a frontend developer on his LinkedIn profile, to resign:

The challenge of these political risks is hardly unknown to Shutterstock. The company’s most recent annual financial filing with the SEC lists market access and censorship as a key risk for...

CHARGE: ILLEGAL ALIEN SOLD INFANT TO PAIR OF ILLEGAL ALIENS IN KENTUCKY

BOWLING GREEN, KY (WBKO) – Three people accused of selling/buying an infant in Bowling Green have now had immigration detainers filed on them by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

ICE filed the detainers with the Warren County Regional Jail on Dec. 3. A statement from ICE said that Maria Domingo-Perez, Catarina Jose-Felipe and Pascual Jose-Manuel were all citizens of Guatemala and illegally present in the U.S.

According to Bowling Green Police, a staff member from Parker-Bennett-Curry Elementary School of Bowling Green City Schools contacted them to do a welfare check at a residence on W 10th Avenue.

Officials say the school had received information that Maria Domingo-Perez had given a child away.

When authorities went to the residence, they say Domingo-Perez returned with the child and gave multiple conflicting statements.

Police say Domingo-Perez eventually said she had given the child away to Pascual Jose-Manuel and...

Adam Schiff’s Release of Phone Records Invites Legal, Ethics Scrutiny

House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., faces ethics and legal hurdles for obtaining and exposing phone records of political enemies, knowledgeable observers say.

Schiff may have violated the same rule he used to threaten House Republicans, said Tom Anderson, director of the Government Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center, a watchdog group.

Schiff warned Republicans on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence not to reveal the name of the whistleblower who first filed a complaint about President Donald Trump’s now-famous July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Schiff warned Republicans members if they did anything to publicize the whistleblower, it would be a violation of House ethics rules,” Anderson told The Daily Signal.

“He didn’t want other members to expose private information of the whistleblower,” Anderson said of Schiff, “but he is doing the same thing to people who don’t have anything to do with the impeachment process.”

The House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Schiff, has been the main player in Democrats’ impeachment inquiry targeting Trump.

Anderson referred to a provision of House rules against actions to “cast discredit or dishonor on the House, the committee, or a Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner or bring the House, the committee, or a Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner into disrepute.”

Information released by Schiff included the communications Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.

Phone records included in the committee’s report show that Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was in contact with associate Lev Parnas, who was recently indicted for a campaign finance violation.

The records also show that Giuliani was in contact with Nunes and Washington journalist John Solomon, formerly of The Hill, and that Nunes also talked to Parnas.

According to the Schiff report, Giuliani also contacted the White House Situation Room and the Office of Management and Budget.

While obtaining information about a journalist likely would not be subject to an ethics complaint, significant concerns have been raised about Schiff’s releasing the information on Solomon, who long has covered Democrats’ efforts to cripple or remove Trump.

The House rule applies only to attacks on fellow House members.

However, release of records regarding figures not targeted in the investigation does demonstrate Schiff’s antipathy toward political rivals and sets an alarming...