Turkey Tells Twitter To Block Turkish Newspaper's Feed; Twitter Plans To Push Back
from the and-here-we-go-again dept
The Turkish government has been battling with Twitter for quite some time. It’s gone after citizens for comments on Twitter, blamed Twitter for social unrest and even tried (temporarily) banning Twitter entirely in the country. There was even a lawsuit by the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, filed with the Constitutional Court, over his own government’s “failure” to implement rules for removing content on Twitter.
The latest, as turned up by Mathew Ingram, is that the Turkish government got a court order demanding that Twitter start blocking the feed of a Turkish newpspaer, Halkin Gazetesi (which means “The People’s Newspaper.”)
The order says the public prosecutor?s office ?is currently conducting an investigation? into an incident involving trucks owned by the National Intelligence Agency, and that this crime involves a number of suspects and members of criminal organizations who cannot be identified.
A source close to Twitter said the court order was filed after the newspaper published information on its front page that the Turkish government claimed might compromise its investigation or be used in the course of military or political espionage, and then proceeded to tweet links to the story from its official account, which is @Birgun_Gazetesi.
Twitter has responded saying while it has blocked the information requested, it is going to file an objection with the court:
“Based on the attached court order received from Turkish authorities requesting removal of two entire Twitter accounts, Twitter, Inc. has been legally compelled to withhold access to one of the accounts and to withhold access to certain Tweets posted by the other Twitter account, as well as several other accounts’ Tweets which were Retweeted by the identified accounts. Twitter will be filing an objection to this order as soon as possible.”
As an aside, the information that Ingram mentions about how it involves an “incident involving trucks owned by the National Intelligence Agency” is actually redacted in the document — but in truly amateurish fashion, it appears that whoever did the redactions did so in such a way that you could just copy and paste the text and see the text (this is like a failure of redacting 101)…
Filed Under: censorship, free speech, newspaper, turkey
Companies: halkin gazetesi, twitter
Comments on “Turkey Tells Twitter To Block Turkish Newspaper's Feed; Twitter Plans To Push Back”
Wait..... they... they WHAT?!? :D
“[…] but in truly amateurish fashion, it appears that whoever did the redactions did so in such a way that you could just copy and paste the text and see the text (this is like a failure of redacting 101)…”
Wait, are you sure this was ineptitude? What if this was a deliberate action by some low level JAFO who disagreed with the requested redactions and intentionally sabotaged them in a way the Powers That Be wouldn’t notice till too late?? 😀 😀
Mind you, there’s still a pretty good chance this was simply complete incompetence… but either way, this made me LOL and LOL.
So what you’re saying is…
Turkey Told Twitter That Turkish Tabloid Text’s Taboo?
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I’m replacing this as my favorite tongue twister. The three tigers were getting old!
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Turkey Told Twitter That Turkish Tabloid Text’s Taboo?
When I saw the headline, I was hoping somebody did that. 🙂
Would the blocked article by any chance ...
… be related to ‘Turkish military says MIT shipped weapons to al-Qaeda’ (MIT being the Turkish national intelligence agency)?
With Google turning up 165000 hits on this, the censor might just be a bit late.
And they call themselves a democratic republic…
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Seems appropriate. The term “democratic republic” is usually used to refer to a certain class of freedom-loving countries, notably E. Germany and N. Korea.
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Nope they don’t. It’s “Republic of Turkey”. No “democratic” in the official title.
I wish Twitter would just stop taking Turkish state seriously. The law is a joke, the courts are a joke. Filing an objection with the court won’t do shit, except implicitly accepting their legitimacy. Rule of law doesn’t exist in Turkey, nor are any jurists aware of habeas corpus.
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Typical liberal. I bet you’re opposed to torture too.
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To quote a celebrated british philosopher, Jack Sparrow:
“WUT?”
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AC Jan 17th, 2015 @ 2:28pm believes that the rule of law is a liberal concept and must therefore be condemned at every opportunity.
Who wants an anarchistic free-for-all with no rules and no justice but what you can get with a gun?
Me neither.
~ Moderate conservative.
Redaction failure, or a deliberate act of incompetence?
If you keep lots of secrets, but sometimes see information that shouldn’t be quite so secret, you might be less motivated double-check your redaction work for that document.