Category: international affairs

Categories
First Amendment rights international affairs Internet controversy privacy

Apple to Keep Encryption

UK, British, surveillance, censorship, iphone, Apple

Thanks, United Kingdom.

Following pressure on UK officials by the Trump administration and some congressmen, British censors have caved — the U.S. Director of National Intelligence confirmed that the UK was abandoning its demand that Apple burn a hole in its iPhone encryption.

So Apple may continue providing its flagship smartphone with robust encryption. Cyberhackers and autocratic regimes (including snoopy British officials) — who’d love a crashable gate into everyone’s private iPhone information — must now endure their extreme disappointment.

Director Tulsi Gabbard reported on X that the UK will “drop its mandate for Apple to provide a ‘back door’ that would have enabled access to the protected encrypted data of American citizens and encroached on our civil liberties.”

Such a back door would have rendered the encryption close to pointless, presenting a vulnerable target to all bad guys in addition to all “good” guys in the UK holding backdoor keys.

Under an agreement in effect since 2019, U.S. companies are obliged to comply with requests from UK officials for data relevant to criminal investigations.

The agreement prohibits surveillance of Americans. But this year British officials secretly demanded that Apple install a back door to enable the UK government to extract data from any iPhone. Yes, that’s any iPhone anywhere in the world. 

The British Government also planned to initiate these back-door intrusions without even needing to show relevance to a UK criminal investigation, let alone provide a warrant.

How long will the reprieve last? Maybe only until we get another U.S. administration as eager to censor everything as the last one was.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture international affairs

Art Caves to Power

Xi Jinping, China, Thailand, censorship, surveillance

The Chinese Embassy in Thailand has pressured the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre to censor an exhibit: to remove works dealing with China’s persecution of groups such as the Uyghurs and Tibetans. 

The exhibit’s curator notes an “irony”: the exhibit being censored is on the theme of censorship. Actually, it’s about more than that. Titled Constellation of Complicity: Visualising the Global Machinery of Authoritarian Solidarity, it’s an ambitious project, attempting “to reveal power in its entanglements, and to insist that art remains one of the last ungovernable territories of resistance.”

But the exhibit is held in the Kingdom of Thailand, not exactly known as a bastion of freedom and democracy. So it shocked no one when the gallery’s operators felt that they had no choice but to submit to China’s demand — in no small part because a financial sponsor and the Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had both accepted the diktat.

What happened is no isolated example of bad behavior — by China or by unresisting victims. Increasingly, we live in a world where the Chinese Communist Party tells us what can be said, what can be shown, what can be done.

Several years ago, a Marriott worker in Nebraska was fired after he or a colleague “liked” a pro-Tibet tweet using the Mariott social media account. The CCP exploded. Marriott has hotels in China. Marriott groveled.

Marco Rubio, then a U.S. Senator, said at the time that every week it seemed that another major company was shamelessly apologizing to the PRC for “some sort of ‘misstep’ related to Tibet . . . and other sensitive issues.”

It’s not just “art” that must learn to resist the governance of China  . . . before it’s too late.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights international affairs Internet controversy

UK Targets Wikipedia

UK, British, Wikipedia, censorship, surveillance

It would be nice if Wikipedia were suing to challenge the United Kingdom’s entire Online Safety Act, not just the provision that most directly targets Wikipedia. 

Better something than nothing, however.

As Wikipedia describes it, the Act “creates a new duty of care for online platforms, requiring them to take action against illegal content, or legal content that could be ‘harmful’ to children where children are likely to access it. Platforms failing this duty would be liable to fines of up to £18 million or 10% of their annual turnover, whichever is higher.”

The Wikipedia Foundation objects to being classified as a category 1 service under the Act, a designation that imposes digital ID requirements on its contributors.

“Privacy is central to how we keep users safe and empowered,” says Phil Bradley-Schmieg, lead counsel for the Wikipedia Foundation. “Designed for social media, this is just one of several category 1 duties that could seriously harm Wikipedia.”

“Designed for social media” — in other words, do it to the other guys, not us.

“Volunteer communities working in more than 300 languages could be exposed to data breaches, stalking, vexatious lawsuits, or even imprisonment by authoritarian regimes,” Bradley-Schmieg adds.

True. But won’t those risks also be faced by those who surf in to say something on a social media platform and suddenly find themselves confronted with age-verification — ID — demands?

We need a tsunami of lawsuits against the UK’s global assault on privacy and freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs

UK as China’s Thumb Puppet

Xi Jinping, China, UK, surveillance, censorship

British police do some good things. In 2023, officers were credited with reducing the number of phone snatchings by punks on mopeds. Great.

Let’s have more of that, less of telling victims of totalitarian dictatorship to shut up for their own good.

The UK police wanted expatriate Hongkonger Carmen Lau, a pro-democracy activist and former Hong Kong politician who has been living in Britain since 2021, to stay out of trouble with China. So in March, London bobbies asked her to sign a “memorandum of understanding” obliging her to avoid public gatherings and “cease any activity likely to put you at risk.”

What activity? 

Not hang gliding.

The sickening effort to muzzle Lau came after neighbors got letters “offering a £100,000 bounty (US$131,947) for information on her movements” leading to her arrest by Hong Kong’s Chinese Communist Party authorities.

Hong Kong denies sending the letters. But in 2024, it placed bounties on the heads of six pro-democracy activists, including Lau, who had fled overseas in the wake of China’s repressive national security law of 2020, which targeted Hong Kong liberties.

Lau felt constrained to submit to the police request when they came to her door but has continued to speak out. “A truly democratic response should center on protecting the rights of those targeted, not advising them to retreat from public life,” she says.

Responding to the revelations, Thames Valley police say that they’d never “confirm or deny safeguarding tactics that we may or may not use. . . .”

Is this the free world? Not if under China’s thumb. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights international affairs

Brazilian Censors Banned!

liberty, freedom, censorship, Brazil, free speech

The American government — after years of nurturing a censorship agenda in the South American country — is now penalizing Brazil’s super-censor Supreme Court justice, Alexandre de Moraes, along with various colleagues, for imposing censorship demands on U.S. companies.

The U.S. State Department revoked their visa privileges, preventing them from entering the United States. The general policy had been introduced May 28, when Secretary of State Rubio announced that it would apply to “foreign officials and [other] persons . . . complicit in censoring Americans.”

By then a UK police commissioner, Mark Rowley, had threatened to “come after” Americans who violate UK “hate speech” laws.

The Trump administration “will hold accountable foreign nationals who are responsible for censorship of protected expression in the United States,” Rubio says.

“Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s political witch hunt against Jair Bolsonaro created a persecution and censorship complex so sweeping that it not only violates basic rights of Brazilians, but also extends beyond Brazil’s shores to target Americans.”

Bolsonaro, a former president of Brazil, is on trial for allegedly seeking to overturn the country’s 2022 presidential election. He has been prohibited from posting on social media or communicating with others under investigation. 

One on this no-contact order is his own son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, currently living in the U.S.

Having ordered social media platforms Rumble and X(-Twitter) to censor opposition figures, Justice Moraes acted to block both services from operating in Brazil when the platforms disobeyed him.

“Free speech,” said X’s Elon Musk, “is the bedrock of democracy and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes.” 

It’s a wonderful thing to have our government once again defending democratic free speech — from its enemies foreign and domestic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs

Democracy Defending Democracy

Taiwan, recall, election, democracy, China

This year’s most important election takes place tomorrow. 

On Saturday, in Taiwan — Asia’s most democratic nation — more than 20 percent of the country’s unicameral legislators serving in the Legislative Yuan will face the voters in a massive, multi-step, typhoon-size recall campaign. 

Coinciding with a real typhoon striking this island nation. 

Which could impact turnout. 

Which matters. 

To successfully oust each officeholder, both a majority of the turnout must agree as well as for that majority to equal 25 percent of all the registered voters in the district. 

“Supporters of the recall movement have portrayed their campaign as ‘anti-communist,’” reports CNN, “seeking to get rid of ‘pro-China’ opposition KMT lawmakers they perceive as collaborators of Beijing’s ruling Communist Party, which vows to ‘reunify’ Taiwan, by force if necessary.” 

Taiwan has divided government. President Lai Ching-te heads the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which does not desire reunification with Chinese Communist Party-ruled China, either by force or surrender, and has been working to improve Taiwan’s military posture. The 113-seat Legislative Yuan, controlled by a coalition between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the smaller Taiwan’s People Party (TPP), has “undermined democratic institutions and national security by obstructing Lai’s administration,” including “freezing defense spending” when China’s military threats are escalating.

The KMT has 24 legislators up for recall tomorrow and another seven in a recall election next month. Meanwhile, KMT efforts to respond by launching recalls against DPP lawmakers completely fizzled. 

Taiwanese billionaire Robert Tsao, a major backer of the recall effort, labeled the 31 KMT lawmakers being recalled “China’s ‘Trojan Horse’ in Taiwan.” 

A KMT official recently called the recall “totally unconstitutional and undemocratic.”

Really? The main point of democracy is to allow the peaceful removal of government officials.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
deficits and debt international affairs

Billions and Billions

China, gold, national debt, foreign policy

While we were going about our business, and maybe even soaking in some summer sunshine, the “US National Debt,” as the federal government’s explicit financial obligation is called, passed the $37 trillion mark. 

As if to mark the occasion, the Chinese government unloaded a whopping eight billion, two hundred million dollars worth of U.S. Treasuries onto the market.

It’s a lot of money.

It’s a lot of debt.

And now China no longer holds it. 

Thus they are not quite as invested in our future.

Is that scary?

Well, everything about our federal debt load should scare us. If we are placid and unperturbed now, how many extra billions and trillions would it take to shake us?

If you are especially concerned about world stability, it might make sense to comfort you with this . . . interesting . . . piece of information: China still holds over $750 billion in United States debt.

A more important piece of information might be what the Chinese central bank has been replacing the U.S. debt with: gold.

Lots of gold.

About 200,000 kilograms of gold!

Nicholas Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan, insists that “a single asset has overtaken the US dollar’s position as the world’s de facto reserve currency.” That asset is gold.

We aren’t on the gold standard, but it looks like we may be falling backwards into something like one.

It makes me wonder if there is still gold in Fort Knox . . . and just how much. 

Mr. Trump? 

Congress? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
defense & war international affairs

A Unique Style

Donald Trump

Some pro-Trumpers embrace the President on the idea that “a businessman can apply common business sense to out-of-control government.” 

Though government could use more such sense, not less, overall I’m not very impressed with this argument because in key ways government is nothing like business.

Government lacks the salient standard of profit and loss. 

Therefore, people trying to apply decent standards are at a disadvantage. The feedback mechanism just doesn’t seem to work in favor of responsibility. Accountability is especially hard when those who must hold bureaucrats and politicians accountable are tempted to get in on the racket.

Which is why so much of politics is B.S.

And if politics is mostly B.S., then maybe putting a B.S.er in charge isn’t such a crazy idea after all.

Did Mr. Trump just prove himself in this manner?

Less than two days after bombing three Iranian nuclear sites, he abruptly announces a cease fire between Israel and Iran, with a promise of peace.

Almost every politician is a narcissist, and Trump wears that diagnosis on his sleeve. He plays one on TV 24/7. Still, it might be . . . B.S. Narcissists don’t conspire to produce peace behind the scenes.

Trump is something else. He may be a B.S.er on most subjects, but perhaps he thinks that the only way to play a B.S. system is to out-B.S. it at every move.

He may have just proven the wisdom of his unique method.

We’ll see. We all hope for peace, though, right?

Right?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
defense & war international affairs

Still a Big Advantage

allies, South China Sea, China, CCP, defense, foreign policy, war

In all the talk of America First — and of the United States as the indispensable nation — we Americans sometimes forget this doesn’t mean “America Alone.” 

“Ultimately, a strong, resolute, and capable network of allies and partners is our key strategic advantage,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently informed the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. “China envies what we have together. And it sees what we can collectively bring to bear on defense.”

Hegseth was speaking directly to Indo-Pacific allies, whom he reminded: “it’s up to all of us to ensure that we live up to that potential by investing” to “quickly upgrade [our] own defenses.”

Our alliances of free nations in Europe and Asia constitute a huge edge against a bullying, totalitarian China.

My entire life, these past six decades, Big Daddy America was by far the biggest, best military on the block. Still is the best. But it’s no longer the biggest: China now has a bigger navy, much greater shipbuilding capacity, and many more soldiers in uniform. Technological and other strategic advantages have been diminished as well.

The defense secretary acknowledged that — after “a lot of ongoing conversations with our military leadership in the Indo-Pacific” — “there is something to be said for the fact that China calculates the possibility and does not appreciate the presence of other countries . . . as part of the dynamics or decision-making process, and, if that is reflected in their calculus, then that’s useful.”

We cannot afford to squander our “ally advantage.” We need each other.

This is Comon Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
defense & war international affairs

China, No

Hegseth

“China’s behavior towards its neighbors and the world is a wake-up call,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth warned at last weekend’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. “We cannot look away, and we cannot ignore it.” 

“Hegseth throws down gauntlet to China” was how Newsweek headlined its story on the Defense Secretary’s “assertive policy address” at Asia’s “premier defense summit.”

“We will stand with you and work alongside you to deter Chinese aggression,” the Secretary pledged to Asian allies. Moreover, he declared that, as a first step, “the Department of Defense is prioritizing forward-postured, combat credible forces in the Western Pacific to deter by denial along the first and second island chains.”

“Hegseth described Chinese coercion and aggression against Taiwan and the South China Sea more clearly than any prior U.S. defense secretary,” offered Bonnie Glaser, managing director, of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific Program. 

Today is June Fourth, 36 years to the day that the People’s Liberation Army rolled tanks into Tiananmen Square, firing on and killing students and other peaceful protesters. Had the George H.W. Bush administration delivered a stronger message to China back then, maybe Hegseth wouldn’t be required to restate President Trump’s insistence that China not be allowed “to invade Taiwan on his watch.”

Or talk openly of doing “what the Department of Defense does best — fight and win — decisively.”

“[B]arely a month after the bloodshed in Tiananmen Square,” Ted Galen Carpenter wrote five years ago, “the White House dispatched National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft on a secret trip to Beijing to mend ties. That visit followed an impassioned personal letter that Bush sent to Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping” in which the president “came perilously close to kowtowing to a brutal, autocratic regime.”

Contributing to the clear and present danger we face today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts