Tuesday, December 01, 2015

I appeal Facebook blocking me from posting to groups until 8 December without reason (WITH UPDATE)



Facebook haven't blocked me for years, but this afternoon I was blocked from joining and posting to groups until 8 December, without any stated reason. Not only that, every single posting I have made to groups since I joined Facebook in 2010 has been removed, including those to an atheist group where I am one of the administrators. I appealed both of these decisions earlier this evening.

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These are the two articles from our Church and State website that I posted to a few popular atheist groups before I was blocked:

The Death Of The Greatest Humanist You Never Heard Of

WSJ #6, Japan Becomes A Perfect Model For Solving The Population Bulge

This is a screenshot I made a few weeks ago of one of my postings to an atheist group:



Now when I search my name in that group, this is what I get:



It is the same with every group I have ever posted to. I find this sinister and really creepy. Paragraph 12 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights comes immediately to mind.

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Paragraph 12 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations

Re Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)


12. It is important to underscore that the discriminatory surveillance suffered by the Applicant and his wife is not an isolated event. Rather, it is emblematic of a larger pattern of surveillance by law enforcement officials in the UK that has been well-documented by international and domestic human rights bodies. For example, the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) specialises in attempting to "discredit, disrupt, delay, deny, degrade, and deter" targets and has been branded by the press as GCHQ's "deception unit". Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in "dirty tricks" like deploying sexual "honey traps" designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online. Previous reporting on the spy agency established its focus on what it regards as political radicalism. Beyond JTRIG's targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted political activists and groups deemed to be "radical", even monitoring human rights NGOs. The London-based Privacy International asks: "How many more problems with GCHQ's secret procedures have to be revealed for them to be brought under control?"

Related blog post (14 October 2015): "Mayor of London's Clearing House service withholds financial data against us in defiance of court ruling"

Here are some more links to our Church and State website:

http://churchandstate.org.uk/about/

http://churchandstate.org.uk/letter-from-the-chairman/

http://churchandstate.org.uk/category/church-and-state-press/

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

UPDATE (2 December, 3.35pm): Still no reply from Facebook, but they have extended their block by an extra day without any stated reason.