Israel Hopes To Censor Facebook and Twitter
Israel’s military launched a new system this week to monitor information on the Internet, the chief military censor said on Tuesday.
Col. Sima Vaknin-Gil said that the new system will monitor visual and textual information on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, on blogs and on traditional news sites.
Speaking at the Digit 2012 conference at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Vaknin-Gil explained that the new system will examine information using key words labeled in advance. The system will be able to monitor information that was previously difficult to reach. “I think that you can’t try to catch everything,” she said, “because that will make the censor lose its relevance, and furthermore – its morality.”
Vaknin-Gil added that “as the chief censor, I have no intention of going into people’s personal diaries, and it important for me to note that we do not ‘sit’ on private Facebook accounts.”
Referring to recent incidents of censored information being published on social networks and blogs – notably by Jewish-American blogger Richard Silverstein – Vaknin-Gil said that “the censor is perceived as a body trying to control the Internet, to no avail. This is mistake – we try to operate within the Internet only in terms of elements related to us.”
For more, go to Haaretz.com
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
