Church and State blog: 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)

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

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

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)

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