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Censorship Industrial Complex

Journalism against the globalist narrative is now considered ‘terrorism’ in the UK

Published

6 months ago

12 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

Richard Medhurst, an ‘internationally accredited journalist’ is allegedly the first journalist to be arrested and held under section 12 of the United Kingdom’s Terrorism Act 2000.

An independent journalist in the United Kingdom has been arrested under terrorism laws upon his return to London.

Richard Medhurst, an “internationally accredited journalist” with strong views against Zionist actions in Israel, was arrested on Thursday, August 15, by six police officers in a move he described on his release as “political persecution.”

“I feel that this is a political persecution and hampers my ability to work as a journalist,” said Medhurst, in a statement released on X (formerly Twitter) on August 19. The reason supplied for his arrest was: “Expressing an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organization.”

Police refused to explain, Medhurst said, although he has been known, in reaction to ongoing IDF slaughtering of innocent Palestinians, to express support in his frequent commentaries for some of Hamas’ violent acts.

Stopped by police as he left the aircraft, Medhurst was taken into a room, searched, had his phone confiscated, and was not permitted to inform his family of his arrest. He spent almost 24 hours in detention in what he described as an attempt to intimidate him for the crime of – journalism.

Describing his journalism as a “public service” and a “counterweight to mainstream media,” Medhurst cited the many other cases of the British liberal-global state using the police to suppress criticism of its foreign and domestic policies.

“Those like myself who are speaking up and reporting on the situation in Palestine are being targeted,” he said.

U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced the redefinition of “terrorism” to include “anti-establishment rhetoric,” “anti-LGBTQI+ sentiment,” “anti-abortion activism,” and any speech online or offline which it deems to be “extreme” – as a report from LifeSiteNews below shows.

The new definition of terrorism now includes regime-critical journalism.

“Many people have been detained in Britain because of their connection to journalism,” explained Medhurst, naming “Julian Assange, [former diplomat] Craig Murray, [GrayZone journalist] Kit Klarenberg, David Miranda, Vanessa Beeley,” who have all been imprisoned, harassed, and detained by U.K. police for their journalism.

Medhurst pointed out that he is the first journalist in the U.K. to be arrested and held under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Medhurst says U.K. terror laws are “out of control” and have “no place in a democracy,” as they are used to “muzzle” reporting on issues such as the “humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

He argues that “counter terrorism laws should be used to fight actual terrorism” – and not to have “journalists dragged off planes and treated like murderers.”

Medhurst’s argument is an embarrassment for a state which has created the conditions of terrorism abroad and at home, whilst seeming reluctant to stop “actual terrorists” themselves.

The Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 was carried out by a Libyan whose family had left Libya in 1994. He was radicalized alongside the British-backed war launched in 2011 to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Salman Abedi was known to the authorities and they did nothing to stop him. He traveled with his father to fight with Islamist militants against the Libyan government forces the U.K. had helped to destroy. His brother Hashem traveled to Libya to join ISIS and helped to organize the bombing.

Schoolmates and a youth worker had warned authorities Abedi was openly announcing his intention to pursue violent jihad in Manchester. When he did so, he killed 22 men, women, and children, leaving hundreds more with life changing injuries.

In April of this year, over 250 injured survivors began suing MI5, the British state security service, for failing to act on this information and permitting the attack to take place.

In almost every case, violent terrorists are previously known to police and intelligence services in the U.K. In most cases, these terrorists seek to replicate the atrocities committed by Islamist militias who have entered the power vacuum created by U.K. government-backed wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya.

They are radicalized in our homelands by the violence the liberal-global state has unleashed abroad. Yet we are told, in every case, that online censorship must follow every preventable attack. This is absurd, as British writer Douglas Murray has pointed out:

It is this liberal-global state which has smashed nations abroad, driving mass migration into the West. Why do these attacks keep happening? Why does the state not prevent them when the attackers are almost always known to them beforehand?

Instead of preventing terrorism as is their duty, state authorities use anti-terror laws to prevent people like Medhurst – and Kit Klarenberg – from informing the public of the cause of this permanent state of emergency which has replaced our normal lives.

In May 2023 British journalist Kit Klarenberg was “detained and interrogated” by six plainclothes police on his return to the U.K.

Klarenberg was questioned on “his personal opinion on everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” as The Grayzone reported last May.

His interrogation was seen as “retaliation” by the British state for his “blockbuster reports exposing major British and US intelligence intrigues.” Klarenberg has documented the illegal process of the election of Boris Johnson as Conservative leader and exposed U.K. involvement in Ukrainian acts of sabotage such as the Kerch Bridge. He was accused, of course, of being a Russian agent during his detention.

Klarenberg, an “anti-establishment” independent reporter, saw his targeting as part of a wider campaign by British security services to shut down The Grayzone. Klarenberg’s reporting has disturbed what retired British diplomat Alastair Crooke has termed “the deep structure of the deep state”, showing how laws are used to protect the exercise of permanent policies untouched by elections and undertaken with complete disregard for public opinion.

As The Grayzone report said: “Among Klarenberg’s most consequential exposés was his June 2022 report unmasking British journalist Paul Mason as a U.K. security state collaborator hellbent on destroying The Grayzone and other media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.”

The Grayzone, whose mission statement is to provide “independent news and investigative journalism on empire,” was founded by Max Blumenthal. It was one of many “media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.”

Following the angry protests over the murder of three small girls by a man of Rwandan origin in Southport, “keyboard rioter” Wayne O’Rourke has been jailed for over three years on charges including “anti-establishment rhetoric.” The protests, fueled by decades of ongoing organized child rape gangs, terror bombings, and murders by immigrant populations, were described by one former police chief as “terrorism.” Others have been imprisoned for protesting in person under terrorism charges.

In the U.K., the broad sweep of “terrorism” laws now provide for the arrest, detention and imprisonment of anyone in open disagreement with the liberal-global ideology. If you oppose abortion, permanent war, genocide in Gaza, if you notice these policies have replaced peace with routine atrocities and a police state at home – you are a terrorist.

The liberal-globalist state which has exported terror abroad and imported it at home will do nothing to prevent it taking place, because this chaos is the result of three decades of the bid for worldwide dominance of the liberal-global empire. The liberal-globalist government is not going to save you from the problems it has caused.

The liberal-global state will never protect you from the consequences of its actions. Its actions will prevent you from talking about them. It will protect others from finding out the truth about its crimes, which are so enormous they do not even have a name.

Like the former dictator of Uganda Idi Amin, the liberal global state in Britain now says “there may be freedom of speech – but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.”

Medhurst was handcuffed tightly and locked in a “mobile cage” within a police vehicle, driven to the station and searched again.

After the confiscation of all his electronic equipment, he was “placed in solitary confinement in a cold cell that smelt like urine.”

Medhurst was informed he had the right to make a phone call and to know why he was being locked up. Both rights were “waived,” “given the nature of the offense,” as Medhurst says he was told by police. He was not permitted to make a phone call and the reason for his imprisonment was not explained.

“For many hours, no one knew where I was.” Medhurst spent almost 24 hours in captivity, waiting 15 hours to be interviewed – a delay he says was intended to “rattle him.” He says this failed.

He also strongly rejects the charge he is a “terrorist” – saying his work is dedicated to a diplomatic tradition of peace he inherited from his own family.

“Both my parents won Nobel Peace Prizes for their work as U.N. peacekeepers,” said Medhurst, before noting he has himself been a victim of terror.

“When I was at the international school in Islamabad, the Egyptian embassy adjacent to my school was blown up in a double bombing.”

“I categorically and unequivocally condemn terrorism,” said Medhurst.

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Business

Apple removes security feature in UK after gov’t demands access to user data worldwide

Published on February 21, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

The decision was otherwise roundly condemned on X as “horrific,” “horrendous,” the hallmark of a “dictatorship,” and even “the biggest breach of privacy Western civilization has ever seen.”

Apple pulled its Advanced Data Protection tool in the UK after the British government ordered the company to give it access to user data around the world.

Apple Store on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Apple pulled its highest-level security feature in the U.K. after the government ordered the company to give it access to user data.

The U.K. government demanded “blanket access” to all user accounts around the world rather than to specific ones, a move unprecedented in major democracies, according to The Washington Post.

The security tool at issue in the U.K. is Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which provides end-to-end encryption so that only owners of particular data – and reportedly not even Apple – can access it.

“Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually need to disable this security feature,” an Apple spokesman said.

According to Apple, the removal of ADP will not affect iCloud data types that are end-to-end encrypted by default such as iMessage and FaceTime.

The nine iCloud categories that will reportedly no longer have ADP protection are iCloud Backup, iCloud Drive, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Safari Bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Wallet Passes, and Freeform.

These types of data will be covered only by standard data protection, the default setting for accounts.

Journalist and Twitter Files whistleblower Michael Schellenberger slammed the U.K.-initiated move as “totalitarian.”

The decision was otherwise roundly condemned on X as “horrific,” “horrendous,” the hallmark of a “dictatorship,” and even “the biggest breach of privacy Western civilization has ever seen.”

Elon Musk declared Friday that such a privacy breach “would have happened in America” if President Donald Trump had not been elected.

 

Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at ESET, commented that the move marks “a huge step backwards in the protection of privacy online.”

“Creating a backdoor for ethical reasons means it will inevitably only be a matter of time before threat actors also find a way in,” Moore said.

Britain reportedly made the privacy invasion demand under the authority of the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Bipartisan US Coalition Finally Tells Europe, and the FBI, to Shove It

Published on February 20, 2025

By

FLICKER OF HOPE? Left, Senator Ron Wyden. Middle, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Right, Rep. Andy Biggs

Racket News  By Matt Taibbi

While J.D. Vance was speaking in Munich, the U.K. was demanding encrypted data from Apple. For the first time in nine years, America may fight back

Last Friday, while leaders around the Western world were up in arms about J.D. Vance’s confrontational address to the Munich Security Council, the Washington Post published a good old-fashioned piece of journalism. From “U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts”:

Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.…

[The] Home Secretary has served Apple with… a technical capability notice, ordering it to provide access under the sweeping U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which authorizes law enforcement to compel assistance from companies… The law, known by critics as the Snoopers’ Charter, makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has even made such a demand.

This rare example of genuine bipartisan cooperation is fascinating for several reasons. Oregon’s Ron Wyden teamed up with Arizona Republican Congressman Andy Biggs to ask new Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard for help in beating back the British. While other Democrats like Michael Bennet and Mark Warner were smearing Gabbard as a Russian proxy in confirmation hearings, Wyden performed an homage to old-school liberalism and asked a few constructive questions, including a request that Gabbard recommit to her stance against government snatching of encrypted data. Weeks later, the issue is back on the table, for real.

The original UK demand is apparently nearly a year old, and Apple has reportedly been resisting internally. But this show of political opposition is new. There has been no real pushback on foreign demands for data (encrypted or otherwise) for almost nine years, for an obvious reason. Europe, the FBI, and the rest of the American national security apparatus have until now mostly presented a unified front on this issue. In the Trump era especially, there has not been much political room to take a stand like the one Wyden, Biggs, and perhaps Gabbard will be making.

The encryption saga goes back at least ten years. On December 2, 2015, two men opened fire at the Inland Center in San Bernardino, killing 14 and injuring 22. About two months later, word got out that the FBI was trying to force Apple to undo its encryption safeguards, ostensibly to unlock the iPhone of accused San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI’s legal battle was led by its General Counsel Jim Baker, who later went to work at Twitter.

One flank of FBI strategy involved overhauling Rule 41 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure. The FBI’s idea was that if it received a legal search warrant, it should be granted power to use hacking techniques, if the target is “concealed through technological means.” The Department of Justice by way of the Supreme Court a decade ago issued this recommendation to Congress, which under a law called the Rules Enabling Act would go into force automatically if legislation was not passed to stop it. In 2016, Wyden joined up with Republican congressman Ted Poe to oppose the change, via a bill called the Stopping Mass Hacking Act.

Two factors conspired to kill the effort. First, the FBI had already won its confrontation with Apple, obtaining an order requiring the firm (which said it had no way to break encryption) to write software allowing the Bureau to use “brute force” methods to crack the suspect’s password. While Apple was contesting, the FBI busted the iPhone anyway by hiring a “publicity-shy” Australian firm called Azimuth, which hacked the phone a few months after the attack. The Post, citing another set of “people familiar with the matter,” outed the company’s name years later, in 2021.

The broader issue of whether government should be allowed to use such authority in all cases was at stake with the “Stopping Mass Hacking” bill. It was a problem for the members that the FBI called its own shot in the San Bernardino case, but the fatal blow came on November 29, 2016, when the UK passed the bill invoked last week, called the Investigatory Powers Act. This legal cheat code gave agencies like Britain’s GHCQ power to use hacking techniques (called “equipment interference”) and to employ “bulk” searches using “general” warrants. Instead of concrete individuals, the UK can target a location or a group of people who “share a common purpose”:
THE IPA: Bulk warrants, warrants by location, warrants on groups with “common purpose”

The law was and is broad in a darkly humorous way. It mandates that companies turn over even encrypted data for any of three reasons: to protect national security, to protect the “economic well-being of the UK,” and for the “prevention or detection of serious crime.”

Once the Act passed, American opposition turtled. How to make a stand against FBI hacking when the Bureau’s close partners in England could now make such requests legally and without restriction? The Wyden-Poe gambits were wiped out, and just two days after the IPA went into effect, changes to Rule 41 in America did as well. These granted American authorities wide latitude to break into anything they wanted, provided they had a warrant. As one Senate aide told me this week, “That was a game-over moment.”

Once the British got their shiny new tool, they weren’t shy about using it. The Twitter Files were full of loony “IPA” dramas that underscored just how terrifying these laws can be. In one bizarre episode in August of 2021, Twitter was asked to turn over data on soccer fans to a collection of alphabet soup agencies, including the Home Office and the “Football Policing Unit.” The Football Police informed Twitter that “in the UK… using the ‘N word’ is a criminal offence — not a freedom of speech issue.”

Twitter executives scrambled to explain to football’s cyber-bobbies that many of their suspects were black themselves, and tweets like “RAHEEM STERLING IS DAT NIGGA” were not, in fact, “hateful conduct.” (The idea that British police needed American executives to interpret sports slang is a horror movie in itself.) Accounts like @Itsknockzz and @Wavyboomin never knew how close they came to arrest:
N**** PLEASE: British police invoked the Investigatory Powers Act to get user information about nonwhite football fans

British overuse was obvious, but Twitter elected not to complain. They also kept quiet when American authorities began pushing for the same power. Though the Apple standoff aroused controversy, 50% of Americans still supported the FBI’s original stance against encryption, which seemed to embolden the Bureau. Senior officials began asking for the same virtually unlimited authority their friends in the UK (and soon after, Australia) were asserting. Donald Trump’s Attorney General, William Barr, seethed about encryption in a keynote speech at an International Cybersecurity Conference on July 23rd, 2019. The Justice Department was tiring of negotiations with tech companies on the issue, Barr said:

While we remain open to a cooperative approach, the time to achieve that may be limited. Key countries, including important allies, have been moving toward legislative and regulatory solutions. I think it is prudent to anticipate that a major incident may well occur at any time that will galvanize public opinion on these issues.

God knows what he meant about a “major incident” that “may well occur at any time,” but Barr was referring to the Investigatory Powers Act and imitator bills that by 2019 were being drafted by most U.S. intelligence partners.

Even without a central “incident,” European officials have been pursuing the dream of full “transparency” into user data ever since, often with support from American politicians and pundits. It was not long ago that Taylor Lorenz was writing outrage porn in the New York Times about the “unconstrained” and “unfettered conversations” on the Clubhouse App. As Lorenz noted, Clubhouse simply by being hard to track aroused the hostility of German authorities, who wrote to remind the firm about European citizens’ “right to erasure” and “transparent information”:

Providers offering services to European users must respect their rights to transparent information, the right of access, the right to erasure and the right to object.

Eventually, the EU tried to submarine end-to-end encryption through dystopian bills like “Chat Control,” which would have required platforms to actively scan user activity for prohibited behavior. This concept was widely criticized even in Europe, and in the States, which was mostly still in the grip of “freedom causes Trump” mania, TechCrunch called it “Hella Scary.”

Chat Control just barely stalled out in October, thanks to the Dutch, but Europe’s feelings about encryption were still more than made clear with this past summer’s arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov. That event was largely cheered in the U.S. press, where Durov was accused of actively “hiding illegal behavior,” and turning his platform into a “misinformation hot spot” used by “far right groups,” “neo-Nazis,” and “Proud Boys and QAnon conspiracy theorists.” The consensus was Durov himself was helping sink the concept of encryption.

“If we assume this becomes a fight about encryption, it is kind of bad to have a defendant who looks irresponsible,” was how Stanford Cyber Policy Analyst Daphne Keller described Durov to the New York Times after his arrest.

The Durov arrest may have marked the moment of peak influence for the cyber-spook movement. Though the Investigatory Powers Act was a major political surveillance tool, it was far from the only important law of its type, or the most powerful. The IPA was in fact just one of a long list of acronyms mostly unfamiliar to American news consumers, from France’s LCEN to Germany’s NetzDG to the EU’s TERREG as well as its Code of Practice on Disinformation and Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online, among many others. American authorities usually followed the pattern in the case of encryption and the IPA, doing informally what European counterparts were able to effect openly and with the force of law.

Now however it looks like efforts by government officials to completely wipe out encryption have failed, and events have taken a new turn. “Wild,” is how the Senate aide characterized the Wyden-Biggs letter, resuming another bipartisan fight put on hold nine years ago. “I’d forgotten what this looks like.”
IRONY ALERT: Germans protesting FBI efforts to break iPhone encryption, 2016

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