{"id":40669,"date":"2012-10-02T10:03:13","date_gmt":"2012-10-02T09:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=40669"},"modified":"2017-07-21T09:59:46","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T08:59:46","slug":"censorship-white-house-youtube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=40669","title":{"rendered":"Letter: White House guilty of censorship by stealth in seeking YouTube removal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>This letter appeared in the\u00a0<a title=\"FT - White House guilty of censorship by stealth in seeking YouTube removal \" href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/528db734-08ac-11e2-b57f-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2825rxOUP\" target=\"_blank\">Financial Times<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Sir,\u00a0Your editorial (\u201c<a title=\"Obama\u2019s realist foreign policy - FT.com\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/06b26e3e-07dc-11e2-8354-00144feabdc0.html\">Obama\u2019s realist foreign policy<\/a>\u201d, September 27) claims that free speech purists were offended by Barack Obama\u2019s comments on\u00a0Innocence of Muslims. As an organisation that defends free expression around the world, Index on Censorship would certainly include itself in the free speech purist camp. Even the president of the US is entitled to say what he likes under the first amendment, as long as he upholds that\u00a0vital\u00a0part of the US constitution for all.<\/p>\n<p>In his address this week to world leaders at the UN General Assembly, President Obama defended \u201cthe right of all people to express their views \u2014 even views that we disagree with\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>However, in reality, the White House is guilty of \u201creaching out\u201d to\u00a0Google\u00a0to look into taking the video off YouTube on the grounds that it breached Google\u2019s terms of service, justifying its removal. This intervention by the US government suggests censorship by stealth, whereby governments can claim to protect free speech while putting pressure on \u201cmiddle men\u201d such as internet service providers to censor for them. All of which raises the question: \u201cWho should control the internet?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kirsty Hughes, Chief Executive, Index on Censorship, London EC1, UK<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In asking YouTube to review an anti-Islam video on the grounds it breached Google&#8217;s terms of service, the White House is guilty of censorship by stealth, says Index CEO <strong>Kirsty Hughes<\/strong> in the Financial Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[581,6534],"tags":[103,986,227,4977,5014,129],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40669"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40674,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40669\/revisions\/40674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}