Reporting on the warfront: The problem with ISIS

November 2, 2014 One wonders why there is not much reporting on the warfront, but from a distance and because of that we do not know very much about ISIS and what is really happening on the ground.  Journalists do not have many choices in reporting on this conflict, the options are to pledge allegiance with ISIS and go through their approval for release and at the same time risk your life with the U.S. drones that the US government has imposed that okay to have civilian casualties in Syria and Iraq. This means, even if they know that you are there, they will shoot anyway. Reporting from the front would be going on a suicide mission.

With increasing kidnappings and deaths of journalists worldwide, the respect for journalism and telling the story is just about a bye gone and that is dangerous for global citizens.

Here is a great article:
The Things we won't know about ISIS

Guantanamo, smuggle secrets, Snowden

1 November 2014 Back in the days, someone asked if I release incriminating images and information about abuse in a Cuban prison. Back in the days, we did not have super encryption to protect the journalists or identity of another person leaking the information. Still today, I do not understand the technology needed to protect the whistle blower or myself from our governments view on journalism crime. Although, I must insert here, most of the information that whistle blowers decide to "leak out" are things that we the taxpayers and citizens of our world should know. You know, to help fight corruptions and be the "good" people and expose the "bad" As a good journalist, I felt that I needed to know my whistle blowers and verify his/her and information before I would write anything up and "leak" that information to major media outlets. Yet, there was nothing to protect us...at that time, at least that I was aware of. As a response, the person asked me again if I could help but I needed to meet him/her and see what they had. I did not have any protection to offer and as a result the person just sort of disappeared. A few months later, the images were released all over the world. Of course I thought to myself, dang...I could have been famous from that what did I do wrong? Yet, I was scared to move forward without protection, I knew what the government was capable of. If this happened to me, and I must insert I was more "visible" in those days during the pre-independent journalism phase of journalism which made me a person that someone like that would approach. What is it like for the independent journalist today? How do we learn to release information that we feel the public should know without having to move to another country and risk going to jail? I stumbled onto this great article: ED SNOWDEN TAUGHT ME TO SMUGGLE SECRETS PAST INCREDIBLE DANGER. NOW I TEACH YOU. Please read, if you are interested in this information

Victims of ISIS: The non western journalists who do not make the headlines

October 27, 2014 20:06 WCT

The risks of being a journalist these days....not only in the U.S. but around the world.

In the past 10 months, at least 17 Iraqi journalists have been executed by Isis. Many others have been kidnapped, their fate unknown.

Last week, Islamic State militants released a fifth video of the British freelance journalist John Cantlie, wearing a Guantánamo Bay-style orange jumpsuit and appearing to read from a script.

The film’s release was widely reported. Unsurprisingly: since August, Isis has released videos showing its beheading of two American journalists,James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as two British aid workers, David Haines and Alan Henning. All have been huge news events.

Less widely covered were reports that, on 13 October, Isis shot and killed the Mosul correspondent of Iraq’s Sada news agency in the city’s al-Ghazlani camp. Several local sources, as well as a Kurdish Democratic party spokesman and a medical centre, confirmed Mohanad al-Aqidi’s death to numerous NGOs (members of his family have since disputed the reports, and al-Aqidi’s fate is currently unclear.)

There are no doubts about the public beheading on 10 October, in Samarra, 50km south-east of Tikrit, of Raad Mohamed al-Azaoui , an Iraqi cameraman and photographer for Sama Salah Aldeen TV. Azaoui, a 37-year-old father of three, was killed with his brother after Friday prayers. More...

Obama: Transparency?

October 27, 2014 11:48 WCT

There has been a lot of talk lately from the White House Press of discrimination of who will get chosen to ask questions.  If the paper or news outlet does not write positive articles about the administration or inquires too deep about an event, then they will get denied access or receive last minute invitations when it is too late to be present.  Many who have been covering the "beat" for years say that this is the most closed administration to press access.  Here is an article I found:

USA Today

At some point, a compendium of condemnations against the Obama administration’s record of media transparency (actually, opacity) must be assembled. Notable quotations in this vein come from former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, who said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New York Times reporter James Risen, who said, “I think Obama hates the press”; and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, who said, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.”

USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page has added a sharper edge to this set of knives. Speaking Saturday at a White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) seminar, Page called the current White House not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any other in history, a clear reference to the Obama administration’s leak investigations and its naming of Fox News’s James Rosen as a possible “co-conspirator” in a violation of the Espionage Act.

more...

When Bad Things Happen to Good People: Journalism

Editor & Publisher ®

CISPA and Journalism

18 April 2012
This is not about photography, per se..but the CISPA bill will effect us all and if any of you out there want to be a photojournalist then your ability to "report" will become more and more limited.  You will loose your "freedom" to create documentary photography stories that you may want to create.  Your work will become limited.  I remember when I was working during the Bush administration, covering the conflict in the Middle East, I could not publish many realities in American news outlets.  We could not publish images of American soldier coffins with flags,  no one would purchase photo stories about the defense contractors in Iraq, or the gas lines.  My images and stories were published all over the world, except for in America.  I became black listed for such behind the scene stories.  I was relieved when Obama took office, and I would have the ability to tell the American people and survive, behind the scene stories once again.  Well folks, CISPA will change all that, and more forever...and it could get much worse.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is a bill that would allow companies doing business in the US to collect records of American citizens online activities, worldwide.  This includes all American journalists, photographers, investigative journalists, news agencies, associations, You Tube and bloggers.  This is a bill in my opinion, is very serious indeed. 

It was developed to help stop "cybersecurity threats" and for "cybersecurity purposes"  The bill is weak in definition, and it does not narrow the categories that the companies are to report to the American government.  This leaves the door open to any kind of interpretation, censor any speech that a company believes could "downgrade the network."  It is supposed to "protect theft or misappropriation of private or government information."  This includes intellectual property.  This gives a powerful weapon to close websites that provide important information to the American public and to the world.  The New York Times, could face problems with this bill because they published information from WikiLeaks.  They could censor international sites from American view who has information that the government does not want the American people to know about.

It reminds me of the European history pre-WWII, or the American Japanese scare and arrests on American soil.  I don't want to be forced to "wear a star" so others can identity me as a "cyber terrorist", or a "propaganda terrorists", (a new term that I read about lately, more on that later) and an American enemy, because I am writing this article.  As far as I am concerned this is the next step towards Fascism, by controlling the people, controlling the media and inserting fear that you may just get arrested the next time you cross over into American borders. 

How does the CISPA effect journalists? 
The bill disregards our Fourth Amendment rights as they apply to journalists and documentary filmmakers working on subject matter related to US military operations, foreign policy and other subjects that the Homeland Security finds offensive. 

Wait, what does homeland security have to do with CISPA the "internet eye in the sky?"  It has everything to do with it, when a person writes "keywords" that are a concern to American homeland security, that person is added to a "Homeland Security watch list" and if that person is researching, investigating, photographing, filmmaking on any of these subjects, then they will be added onto this list.  When someone is on the list, then the government, Homeland Security will have the right to arrest, question, or detain that person without any explanation, rights to make a phone call, for any amount of time and without any legal representation.  Now that is a hard call and a scary one.

The fourth amendment reads: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Is not the passing of CISPA creating the legal ability for the government (what ever branch) to follow citizens actions, opinions, online published papers, published articles, images, or emails and conversations using the written word or even voiced such as on Skype or Google, against the fourth amendment?  This action will Kill the Forth Amendment. 

In the end, it boils down to who is reading the key words and what kind of mood they are in that day if they report you or not. If anyone in the corporation feels that the citizen in this case, journalist, is approaching information that concerns the said "national interest, sensitive, secret or protected from disclosure then that information," journalist will be considered a "threat".  Remember it is the government or "homeland security" that can distinguish which materials are public or protected from disclosure not the companies.

CISPA puts the companies into the position of becoming "informers" with the promise of shielding them from any legal responsibility.  The government and these companies, (see supporters of CISPA list) tell the citizens that the law protects the populations and tech companies from cyber attacks.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers"

That freedom was suppressed in Germany by President Paul Von Hindenburg, as Adolf Hitler was coming into power.  Hitler suppressed press freedom through the Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda where which the government acted as a central point for all media, issuing orders as to what stories could or could not be told. In this way, important realities were kept from the citizens and the journalists did not have a choice to take action in fear of execution. 

This bill instills increased fear among the American people.  I always hear people say, "Well, I'm not doing anything wrong, they can do what they want.  I have nothing to hide."  Wait a minute, does this mean because you are a "good person" that you will watch our civil rights drift away?  What happens when you become really angry about what can most likely happen in America's future when our freedoms are really gone and you want to say something or do something about it, like create a petition?  If the CISPA bill passes, you will be faced with the fear regarding, your postings on Facebook, web searches, sending emails, writing blog posts, any communication online...for fear that someone could "come knocking" on your door.  This has already happened to over 50,000 American citizens, and some of them have quietly been deported.

If "they" don't like what you are doing, they will have the right to: shut you down, your website, your blog, your business, and your existence.

Reporters Without Borders put it this way, "The definition of potential threats is even broader. It targets ‘‘efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy” a system or network, the “theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information”.  CISPA in its current form is written in broad scope.  The information that the companies share is not narrow and limited.  Information sharing should be about increasing Internet users' security, not government surveillance.

Related Articles:
Stop the Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act

CISPA Supporters List
True America: Where Lies Become the Truth
Procedures for handling Assemblies and Mass Demonstrations in D.C.