Friday, October 13, 2017

SiteGround: We are told to remove a Creative Commons article or our Church and State website will be disabled (WITH DOUBLE UPDATE 16/10/2017)

Sounds like you are being fraudulently attacked.

Donald A. Collins, President, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Re: Internet cuts since 26 May 2017

From my earlier blog post's Update 28 September (11.16pm):

"And it's not just Facebook blocks, blocks on public access to our Church and State website and the daily targeting to fluctuating degrees of category pages throughout the site that Declan and I are dealing with these days. We have also been dealing with Internet cuts since 26 May. See my blog post of 21 June, Internet cuts: We pay £65 per month for BT Infinity but feel we are in a race against time to stay online (WITH UPDATE 28/9/2017 RE: 163rd Internet cut since 26 May 2017)."

16 October (12.29pm): 165 internet cuts since 26 May 2017.* We had to suspend work on our Church and State website on 15 June after 4 internet cuts in one night. With an all-time record breaking 7 cuts in one day by 4pm on 29 August; 14 cuts last month that included on 5 September our latest 1/2 hour removal from the internet plus the almost total shutdown of our BT TV service; no cuts since 13 October (as of 16 October at 12.29pm).

1. 143rd 29 August 2017, 8.42am
2. 144th 29 August 2017, 9.54am
3. 145th 29 August 2017, 10.52am
4. 146th 29 August 2017, 11.38am
5. 147th 29 August 2017, 12.02pm
6. 148th 29 August 2017, 12.47pm
7. 149th 29 August 2017, 3.10pm
-----------------------------------------
10. 152nd 5 September 2017, 11.53am
11. 153rd 5 September 2017, 1.48pm
12. 154th 5 September 2017, 4.35pm
13. 155th 5 September 2017, 9.32pm (28 minutes+)
-----------------------------------------
23. 165th 13 October 2017, 8.50am

* 12 out of the first 18 internet cuts were within the first four days of a BT engineer's visit on 12 June. It is a matter of written record that this engineer "securely fitted a brand new master socket to another location on the same wall. He also carried out a comprehensive line test and could not find a problem with [our] line".

The War on Free Expression

Our web host is SiteGround, a company founded in 2004 and servicing more than 800,000 domains worldwide. SiteGround is paid $1,000 per year to host our Church and State website and manage the server. This evening Declan received an email from SiteGround's solicitors, the Wisconsin-based Amundsen Law Firm, stating that we had to remove an article (creative commons) from our site or the site would be disabled by SiteGround pending our legal challenge by counter notice. We were basically left with one of two choices: spend the next week on a counter notice to SiteGround or remove the article and spend the week researching Northern Europe for the most committed free speech advocates we can find. We immediately opted for the latter and Declan wrote to the head of Amundsen Law Firm, Jennifer Amundsen, as follows:

For the attention of Tenko Nikolov, Chief Executive, SiteGround

Jennifer Amundsen
Amundsen Law Firm

Address removed for email


13 October 2017

Dear Ms Amundsen,

Thank you for your email.

We have removed the Addicting Info article, to which you refer. Please see attachments 1-3 for details.

Please note that Addicting Info is a Creative Commons website: http://addictinginfo.com/creative-commons-license/.

Please would you acknowledge receipt of this email.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

"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 16 October (12.34pm): We still have absolutely no idea whether or not our Church and State website is coming down. SiteGround have only confirmed this afternoon that our website will not be deactivated pending further communication from the complainant; and this notwithstanding that Addicting Info is a Creative Commons website. When Declan couldn't get assurance last Friday from Amundsen Law Firm that our website will NOT be disabled, he emailed SiteGround CEO Tenko Nikolov as follows:

Tenko Nikolov
Chief Executive
SiteGround

Address removed for email


13 October 2017

Dear Mr Nikolov,

We have removed the Addicting Info article, as requested; and this notwithstanding that Addicting Info is a Creative Commons website.

Please would you confirm that our website will not now be disabled by SiteGround.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

UPDATE 16 October (3.35pm): This afternoon Declan complained to SiteGround about further notices from the complainant. We have just heard back from them. This time they write: "Note that no further communication is required for this. This case is closed and your website will not be deactivated. No further actions are required on your end." This is bittersweet from SiteGround. We have lost an excellent article on our Church and State website which clearly had a creative commons licence applied. As can be seen above, it had also been shared/liked on Facebook 1,300 times. Our website is currently approaching three million hits this year; 70% are from Americans.


Re: Investigatory Powers Tribunal

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) dismissed Declan's complaint against the secret services on papers in less than three weeks, on 1 September 2011, stating that it was "obviously unsustainable". This is paragraph 11 of Declan's updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

11. The IPT was created in October 2000 by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and given the power to investigate any complaints against GCHQ, MI5 or MI6, as well as complaints about surveillance operations mounted by the police or any other public bodies. On 5 March 2014 the Guardian reported that the tribunal, which claims to be completely independent of the UK Government, is secretly operating from a base within the Home Office, by which it is funded. The newspaper found that the IPT had investigated about 1,500 complaints, and upheld only 10; five of these concerned members of one family who had all lodged complaints about surveillance by their local council. No complaint against any of the intelligence agencies had ever been upheld. The discovery that the IPT is lodged within a Whitehall department fuelled criticisms of the tribunal that had been levelled by rights groups, lawyers and complainants. The IPT's critics complain that the secrecy is excessive and that its procedures are stacked so heavily in favour of the government and against complainants that it is fundamentally unfair. According to the Guardian, some senior lawyers have described the IPT as "Kafkaesque", while one eminent barrister has dismissed it as "a kangaroo court". The newspaper also reports that as a consequence of the secrecy surrounding the tribunal and the perception that it is unfair, many would-be complainants spurn it.

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From My Picks:

8 May 2018: Threat to life: Updated complaint to the United Nations under Article 19 (freedom of expression) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Today we are cut off the internet for a half an hour

'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