7 ms·

Similar happens with the name "Eric Ciaramella", which YouTube instantly deletes. This is a name of a CIA whistle blower. It would be interesting to know what o

by humaid 6y ago

Similar happens with the name "Eric Ciaramella", which YouTube instantly deletes. This is a name of a CIA whistle blower. It would be interesting to know what other words are in the YouTube censor list.

jshevek 6y ago
I have posted a link to a list elsewhere in the thread. (Not sure if it would be spam to repost it in this reply, sorry for the inconvenience.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Swenrekcah 6y ago
Interesting, but there is a pretty clear difference between censorship to protect an individual and censorship of critisising a government.
- che_shirecat 6y ago
  Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" Isn't the point of being against censorship is that nothing is above the interests of public scrutiny? Partial censorship seems fundamentally contradictory in terms of the underlying moral justification.
  - reaperducer 6y ago
    Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? No. It's a game that was played out long ago by responsible organizations. It's just that the tech industry is stumbling upon it these days. For example, responsible media outlets don't publish information about rape victims or suicides unless there is a compelling public interest.
    - pgeorgi 6y ago
      And it even varies by culture. US media reporting on crimes in Germany tend to get confused (to the point that at least once they suspected some public cover up attempt) that they won't get the names of arrested suspects - that's part of our approach to privacy here, while apparently having the names out is considered a mechanism against misconduct by the police in the US (at least that's how it was explained to me when I asked why the names are always public). I can follow both arguments but there's only room for implementing one in any given society. Societies overlapping like they do now (thanks to globalization and, to no small part, the internet) doesn't make that easier.
      - throwaway511543 6y ago
        I mean going by a lot of American's perception, only the US way is the correct way, so it must mean that Germany is doing some form of cover up! To make things even better, Germany should ditch its civil law for common law! /s
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Yes, obviously. Nobody is forced to have an absolutist position on censorship just like it's mostly silly to have an absolutist position on anything else. >Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" In this case Google, which is a private business. In other cases the government, or the courts. Depends on the issue at hand. There's nothing contradictory about partial censorship in the same way there's nothing contradictory about having a speed limit.
  - Swenrekcah 6y ago
    Some things are above the interest of public scrutiny. Medical records and whistleblower identities are two examples.
  - ben509 6y ago
    Deleting spam is universally agreed upon as OK censorship. I think it's viewed as OK because everyone can see that many conversation forums can't even work if they're flooded with spam. And to head off the "no, deleting spam is clearly distinct from censorship," imagine you write a book, so we're dealing purely with ideas. Obviously, for anyone to read it, you have to promote it. If you post it in too many places or are too "hypey", you'll quickly get banned as spamming. You got censored, there's no way around it. So we've always been in the "what censorship is OK" realm.
    - sneak 6y ago
      Spam should be foldered, not deleted.
  - himinlomax 6y ago
    If you interpret freedom of speech as freedom of opinion, the sentence fragment "communist bandit" is a statement of opinion that should unequivocally be protected, whereas that isn't quite as clear cut for the name as such of a specific person. (Note that I think that the prohibition on the name is at this point completely moot anyway)
- MiSeRyDeee 6y ago
  Can't you even see removing the CIA's whistle blower's name is in interest of US gov? How can that be interpreted as protecting an individual?
  - Swenrekcah 6y ago
    It certainly does not seem to be in the interest of the current US government. To answer your question: Protecting a whistleblower's identity is in the interest of US society as a whole. It protects the individual somewhat from persecution which in turn encourages people to blow the whistle on illegal activities, thus benefiting society.
    - MiSeRyDeee 6y ago
      Still, it's redacted due to some interesting parties pressing charges. Protecting a whistleblower's identity is the right thing for sure, but I don't believe Google add his name on the list for the righteous reason.
    - crocodiletears 6y ago
      If the last four years have proven anything, it's that the US gvt. is not a monolith. The three branches of the government are further subdivided into bureaus, agencies, committees, and regional subdivisions, all with their own distinct interests and concerns. The president may be the chief subject of public scrutiny at present, but that doesn't mean other interests within the state should be immune to scrutiny. I can't claim to know anything about ciarmella's background, save what hyper-partisan, conservative outlets have spewed. But absent more even-handed coverage, or rebuttals from liberal and left-leaning outlets, the details of his personal history, and affiliations do seem to merit some level of public scrutiny. Anyone interested can look him up on Breitbart, conservapedia /wikispooks, or through any other connservativr outlet (oddly enough, not fox last time I checked). But I'd rather not link to those rags if I'm not confident of the veracity of the information within.
cronix 6y ago
Facebook deletes posts with that name in it as well. You're not allowed, even if the name appears in "main steam" press. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/11/face-n11.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/11/face-n11.html
- pas 6y ago
  World Socialist Web Site as mainstream press needs very-very big quotes. And this Eric C character turned out to be a nobody (maybe a CIA analyst). So why censor this name? Could be a NSL? (But can that somehow compel the recipient to censor a name anywhere?)
CamelCaseName 6y ago
Wow. No Wikipedia articles on him either, and reports of people getting permanently banned from Wikipedia for trying to create that article, or even mentioning him in another.
- willis936 6y ago
  Wow. It's almost like the missions of popular websites fall in line with protecting individuals against government-sponsored attacks on whistleblowers. Witness protection isn't some flashy thing in movies. It's real and society benefits from it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - CamelCaseName 6y ago
    1. I imagine state actors have better information than Wikipedia editors. 2. Leaving that aside, why permanently ban those who make such contributions to Wikipedia?
    - anoraca 6y ago
      Are most people who repeatedly try to edit Wikipedia with disallowed content banned?
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      1. State actors also have a long and established history of abuses of power. We should not defer to what they have to say on issues related to their possible abuses. 2. Propensity for creating such a page is a strong indication of extremely poor judgement.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
    .
    - willis936 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
anoraca 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
  .
  - andrewprock 6y ago
    For wikipedia, the guidelines are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin... I'm not sure that Google has a published set of guidelines. Obviously Hacker News has a different set of guidelines. Individual corporations are allowed to make their own guidelines. This is what Libertarians call "freedom of association".
guerrilla 6y ago
Wow I just verified this for myself
londons_explore 6y ago
Anyone at Google, you can see the complete list here: http://cs/Eric+Ciaramella http://cs/Eric+Ciaramella
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  Am I reading this right? There is a list of censored words that applies across all google products, but only google employees can access it? Anyone at google want to be a whistleblower and share this list?
  - crocodiletears 6y ago
    This would be an incredible public service. While I believe Google is within its right to censor information on their platforms, the opacity with-which they do it is imo unacceptable, given the scale of their influence on the public dialogue. Similarly, I think any media conglomerate should be required to publish any formal lists of in-house gag-orders.
    - TechBro8615 6y ago
      Ironically, it was google that first innovated along these lines with their “chilling effects” project. Any time a URL was removed via a copyright complaint, they would log it. If a search result was censored, you could see the copyright complaint. I’m not sure if they still do this.
      - rnotaro 6y ago
        Yes it does! They send the Chilling Effect report by email now though so you need to drop your email to received the list of DMCA'ed URIs.
- jrg123 6y ago
  Google still allows http internally?
proc0 6y ago
Someone create a worm/virus that just spams this name across the web.
xenocyon 6y ago
That's a strange equivalence, and a malevolent comment. Outing whistle-blowers (or supposed whistle-blowers) is bad for democracy. The government is supposed to be transparent to the people. This does not mean that the people should be transparent to the government, or that dissidents should be outed.
- drak0n1c 6y ago
  The "whistle-blower" was a federal employee making allegations of hearsay and intent identifying other federal employees (not just the President). What is the line that decides that one is immune to scrutiny while others receive the full brunt? Is it partisan lines, or perhaps seniority cut-offs? Carter Page received no such protection from being targeted and publicly unmasked, despite being a long-time investigation informant. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/while-were-talking-about-abuse-of-power-lets-look-at-the-fbi/2020/01/23/b6dfda80-3e25-11ea-baca-eb7ace0a3455_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/while-were-talking-a... Such ambiguity fosters an environment of pre-emptive accusations, rife with alternating investigations and immunity.
- Amezarak 6y ago
  Do you find it implausible that an agent of the CIA could pose as a whistleblower to advance antidemocratic intelligence efforts against US citizens? Look, I'm not saying that's what happened, I don't know anything about it, but the idea that we should be shutting down inquiry into CIA agents interfering in other parts of our government, given the known history of the CIA, is absolutely crazy to me. And it's not like they've changed! We're talking about an organization that just recently illegally spied on the Congressional illegal CIA torture investigation and then lied about it to Congress (also a crime) - and got away with it! Even in other branches of the government, we know that "whistleblowers" are not always acting in good faith - the NY Times just did a story about a "whistleblower" lying to the press about what was happening and using that as an excuse to leak people's personal information to the press, all in order to advance his own political agenda. If that can happen at the IRS, surely it can happen at the CIA? And surely we should at least be able to look into whether that's a possibility> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farrow.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farr...
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
Gotta love this site. Snowden is revered around here yet a whistleblower goes through the proper channels to report wrongdoing by the US government and they still get outed, named, and trampled. Do you want government oversight or not? Do you want whistleblowers or not? And dang is nowhere to be found
- whylie 6y ago
  Snowden blew the whistle on legitimate information - the other guy did not & that outcome was upheld in court. Hard to see how you could miss such an important distinction between the two unless you had some other motive.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html >Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.
akvadrako 6y ago
I wonder if that name is also blocked from HN. According to google there is only one hit besides this comment section.
wwarner 6y ago
Wow. But this case raises the additional point that the subject definitely wants, deserves and is legally entitled to anonymity.

by humaid 6y ago

jshevek 6y ago

I have posted a link to a list elsewhere in the thread. (Not sure if it would be spam to repost it in this reply, sorry for the inconvenience.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Swenrekcah 6y ago

Interesting, but there is a pretty clear difference between censorship to protect an individual and censorship of critisising a government.

che_shirecat 6y ago
Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" Isn't the point of being against censorship is that nothing is above the interests of public scrutiny? Partial censorship seems fundamentally contradictory in terms of the underlying moral justification.
- reaperducer 6y ago
  Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? No. It's a game that was played out long ago by responsible organizations. It's just that the tech industry is stumbling upon it these days. For example, responsible media outlets don't publish information about rape victims or suicides unless there is a compelling public interest.
  - pgeorgi 6y ago
    And it even varies by culture. US media reporting on crimes in Germany tend to get confused (to the point that at least once they suspected some public cover up attempt) that they won't get the names of arrested suspects - that's part of our approach to privacy here, while apparently having the names out is considered a mechanism against misconduct by the police in the US (at least that's how it was explained to me when I asked why the names are always public). I can follow both arguments but there's only room for implementing one in any given society. Societies overlapping like they do now (thanks to globalization and, to no small part, the internet) doesn't make that easier.
    - throwaway511543 6y ago
      I mean going by a lot of American's perception, only the US way is the correct way, so it must mean that Germany is doing some form of cover up! To make things even better, Germany should ditch its civil law for common law! /s
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >Are we playing "what censorship is OK censorship" now? Yes, obviously. Nobody is forced to have an absolutist position on censorship just like it's mostly silly to have an absolutist position on anything else. >Who determines that "pretty clear difference?" In this case Google, which is a private business. In other cases the government, or the courts. Depends on the issue at hand. There's nothing contradictory about partial censorship in the same way there's nothing contradictory about having a speed limit.
- Swenrekcah 6y ago
  Some things are above the interest of public scrutiny. Medical records and whistleblower identities are two examples.
- ben509 6y ago
  Deleting spam is universally agreed upon as OK censorship. I think it's viewed as OK because everyone can see that many conversation forums can't even work if they're flooded with spam. And to head off the "no, deleting spam is clearly distinct from censorship," imagine you write a book, so we're dealing purely with ideas. Obviously, for anyone to read it, you have to promote it. If you post it in too many places or are too "hypey", you'll quickly get banned as spamming. You got censored, there's no way around it. So we've always been in the "what censorship is OK" realm.
  - sneak 6y ago
    Spam should be foldered, not deleted.
- himinlomax 6y ago
  If you interpret freedom of speech as freedom of opinion, the sentence fragment "communist bandit" is a statement of opinion that should unequivocally be protected, whereas that isn't quite as clear cut for the name as such of a specific person. (Note that I think that the prohibition on the name is at this point completely moot anyway)
MiSeRyDeee 6y ago
Can't you even see removing the CIA's whistle blower's name is in interest of US gov? How can that be interpreted as protecting an individual?
- Swenrekcah 6y ago
  It certainly does not seem to be in the interest of the current US government. To answer your question: Protecting a whistleblower's identity is in the interest of US society as a whole. It protects the individual somewhat from persecution which in turn encourages people to blow the whistle on illegal activities, thus benefiting society.
  - MiSeRyDeee 6y ago
    Still, it's redacted due to some interesting parties pressing charges. Protecting a whistleblower's identity is the right thing for sure, but I don't believe Google add his name on the list for the righteous reason.
  - crocodiletears 6y ago
    If the last four years have proven anything, it's that the US gvt. is not a monolith. The three branches of the government are further subdivided into bureaus, agencies, committees, and regional subdivisions, all with their own distinct interests and concerns. The president may be the chief subject of public scrutiny at present, but that doesn't mean other interests within the state should be immune to scrutiny. I can't claim to know anything about ciarmella's background, save what hyper-partisan, conservative outlets have spewed. But absent more even-handed coverage, or rebuttals from liberal and left-leaning outlets, the details of his personal history, and affiliations do seem to merit some level of public scrutiny. Anyone interested can look him up on Breitbart, conservapedia /wikispooks, or through any other connservativr outlet (oddly enough, not fox last time I checked). But I'd rather not link to those rags if I'm not confident of the veracity of the information within.

cronix 6y ago

Facebook deletes posts with that name in it as well. You're not allowed, even if the name appears in "main steam" press. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/11/face-n11.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/11/11/face-n11.html

pas 6y ago
World Socialist Web Site as mainstream press needs very-very big quotes. And this Eric C character turned out to be a nobody (maybe a CIA analyst). So why censor this name? Could be a NSL? (But can that somehow compel the recipient to censor a name anywhere?)

CamelCaseName 6y ago

Wow. No Wikipedia articles on him either, and reports of people getting permanently banned from Wikipedia for trying to create that article, or even mentioning him in another.

willis936 6y ago
Wow. It's almost like the missions of popular websites fall in line with protecting individuals against government-sponsored attacks on whistleblowers. Witness protection isn't some flashy thing in movies. It's real and society benefits from it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- CamelCaseName 6y ago
  1. I imagine state actors have better information than Wikipedia editors. 2. Leaving that aside, why permanently ban those who make such contributions to Wikipedia?
  - anoraca 6y ago
    Are most people who repeatedly try to edit Wikipedia with disallowed content banned?
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    1. State actors also have a long and established history of abuses of power. We should not defer to what they have to say on issues related to their possible abuses. 2. Propensity for creating such a page is a strong indication of extremely poor judgement.
- s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
  .
  - willis936 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

anoraca 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistleblower_Protection_Act

s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
.
- andrewprock 6y ago
  For wikipedia, the guidelines are here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_livin... I'm not sure that Google has a published set of guidelines. Obviously Hacker News has a different set of guidelines. Individual corporations are allowed to make their own guidelines. This is what Libertarians call "freedom of association".

guerrilla 6y ago

Wow I just verified this for myself

londons_explore 6y ago

Anyone at Google, you can see the complete list here: http://cs/Eric+Ciaramella http://cs/Eric+Ciaramella

TechBro8615 6y ago
Am I reading this right? There is a list of censored words that applies across all google products, but only google employees can access it? Anyone at google want to be a whistleblower and share this list?
- crocodiletears 6y ago
  This would be an incredible public service. While I believe Google is within its right to censor information on their platforms, the opacity with-which they do it is imo unacceptable, given the scale of their influence on the public dialogue. Similarly, I think any media conglomerate should be required to publish any formal lists of in-house gag-orders.
  - TechBro8615 6y ago
    Ironically, it was google that first innovated along these lines with their “chilling effects” project. Any time a URL was removed via a copyright complaint, they would log it. If a search result was censored, you could see the copyright complaint. I’m not sure if they still do this.
    - rnotaro 6y ago
      Yes it does! They send the Chilling Effect report by email now though so you need to drop your email to received the list of DMCA'ed URIs.
jrg123 6y ago
Google still allows http internally?

proc0 6y ago

Someone create a worm/virus that just spams this name across the web.

xenocyon 6y ago

That's a strange equivalence, and a malevolent comment. Outing whistle-blowers (or supposed whistle-blowers) is bad for democracy. The government is supposed to be transparent to the people. This does not mean that the people should be transparent to the government, or that dissidents should be outed.

drak0n1c 6y ago
The "whistle-blower" was a federal employee making allegations of hearsay and intent identifying other federal employees (not just the President). What is the line that decides that one is immune to scrutiny while others receive the full brunt? Is it partisan lines, or perhaps seniority cut-offs? Carter Page received no such protection from being targeted and publicly unmasked, despite being a long-time investigation informant. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/while-were-talking-about-abuse-of-power-lets-look-at-the-fbi/2020/01/23/b6dfda80-3e25-11ea-baca-eb7ace0a3455_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/while-were-talking-a... Such ambiguity fosters an environment of pre-emptive accusations, rife with alternating investigations and immunity.
Amezarak 6y ago
Do you find it implausible that an agent of the CIA could pose as a whistleblower to advance antidemocratic intelligence efforts against US citizens? Look, I'm not saying that's what happened, I don't know anything about it, but the idea that we should be shutting down inquiry into CIA agents interfering in other parts of our government, given the known history of the CIA, is absolutely crazy to me. And it's not like they've changed! We're talking about an organization that just recently illegally spied on the Congressional illegal CIA torture investigation and then lied about it to Congress (also a crime) - and got away with it! Even in other branches of the government, we know that "whistleblowers" are not always acting in good faith - the NY Times just did a story about a "whistleblower" lying to the press about what was happening and using that as an excuse to leak people's personal information to the press, all in order to advance his own political agenda. If that can happen at the IRS, surely it can happen at the CIA? And surely we should at least be able to look into whether that's a possibility> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farrow.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farr...

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

Gotta love this site. Snowden is revered around here yet a whistleblower goes through the proper channels to report wrongdoing by the US government and they still get outed, named, and trampled. Do you want government oversight or not? Do you want whistleblowers or not? And dang is nowhere to be found

whylie 6y ago
Snowden blew the whistle on legitimate information - the other guy did not & that outcome was upheld in court. Hard to see how you could miss such an important distinction between the two unless you had some other motive.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html >Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

akvadrako 6y ago

I wonder if that name is also blocked from HN. According to google there is only one hit besides this comment section.

wwarner 6y ago

Wow. But this case raises the additional point that the subject definitely wants, deserves and is legally entitled to anonymity.