07-Jul-17: Symantec's classification tool now calls our blog a hate site

Silencing unwanted voices in a previous generation [Wikipedia: Nazis burn
books]

[Five updates appear at the foot of this post.]

Elder of Ziyon has just posted an alarming piece [Symantec categorizes numerous pro-Israel blogs as "hate", July 4, 2017] which reports on what appears to be the systematic mis-characterization of certain websites with a pro-Israel orientation as "hate" sites.

This classification means some major Internet Service Providers (who use server-based filtering supplied by Symantec Corporation) will prevent access to those sites, effectively silencing them. The indications till now are that the gag applies principally or only to British ISPs. But it's not hard to see this malicious craziness spreading more widely.

It's a censoring process that has no clear published rules as far as we know. Symantec, the US supplier that provides this service to ISPs, allows for the classification of websites by reference to a long list of categories defined in an on-line document called "URL filtering categories" dated June 8, 2011. You can inspect it online at https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.HOWTO100317.html But you can't know from there what logic goes into the classification itself.

That Symantec document defines a filtering category called "Hate" as

"Sites that promote hostility against particular individual or group on the basis of race, religion, color, gender, and origin."

If you are defined this way, large numbers of unsuspecting Internet customers of those ISPs will not be able to get access to your site. It's a serious issue.

Yesterday, thanks to a tweet [here] from a British source, we discovered that our blog is now classed by that Symantec filter, and its many ISP and corporate users, as a hate site:

Click for the source tweet (and an archived version)

(We appreciate very much the leg-work and the tip-off which made us aware. His longer analysis is here: http://edgar1981.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/blog-by-parents-of-murdered-israeli.html)

Here's the little we know about Symantec's "classification" service. It's called RuleSpace and in Symantec's market-speak it

incorporates proven and globally respected URL Web categorization databases with real-time analysis to multiple markets. RuleSpace offers a unique combination of database lookups and real-time analysis for accurate categorization of unknown or dynamic web sites, especially useful in dealing with sites containing user generated content. Symantec provides superior service quality with a dedicated engineering and technical support team, powering dozens of 3rd party web filtering solutions, serving more than 350 million end-users worldwide.

Elder of Ziyon mentions several others that have gotten the same treatment: his own Elder of Ziyon site, Israellycool, Israel Matzav and Abu Yehuda. The website of the British gentleman we mentioned above, called Confronting antisemitism and Israel hatred is also ridiculously classed as a hate site.

There are bound to be others.

To be sure, we checked our site's status (using this address: thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.uk, since the problem seems to be focused on the UK) with Symantec's online classifier and confirmed that the report is right: ThisOngoingWar: A Blog is now, in its British address version, indeed classed as a hate site by the Symantec classification commissars:

Screen shot of Symantec's online classification tool [here] and the result we got: "Hate, English"

We clicked the "submit" button to request what Symantec calls a "review" and we're waiting for that dark and unexplained process to run its course.

We plan to dig further to try to understand how easily a malicious individual (a "lone wolf"?) or an organized gang of haters ("cognitive warriors"?) can have voices unfriendly to their viewpoints silenced and essentially removed from public discourse.

From what we see so far, it's chillingly easy.

Is the gagging of our site connected to our recent efforts to have Twitter shut down the account of an undoubted hater/bigot, the murderer of our daughter, as we wrote here ["25-Jun-17: A voice of lethal, bigoted hatred is silenced... for a while"] a few days ago?

We might find out. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 10:45 am July 7, 2017: A few additional insights to share.

1. We Googled for lists of self-avowed hate sites, antisemitic sites and Holocaust-denial sites. (Sadly, they're not hard to find.) We fed those names into the Symantec tool and roughly half of them came up classified as "hate". The other half from Symantec's stand-point are fine. (Interested to know which hate sites we found that Symantec approves? Glad to answer you by email.)
2. Symantec comes up with a "hate" label for the British URL of our blog, meaning thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.uk, every time we checked this morning. However if you enter the same site via its US or Australian or German or any non-UK version of its address (again, the very same site but via a slightly different Blogspot URL), Symantec classifies it as "Dynamic Site" and/or "Blogging, English". If the stakes weren't so high - and they surely are - this would be funny.
3. The only thing for which we express hate in our blog is terrorism and those who do it. So we're not at all interested in a discussion about "well, maybe you really are hateful". We're not and the blog is not. Which leads us to say, with all the respect and understanding we have for complex technological challenges and algorithm-based solutions - after a long career managing serious tech companies on three continents - that if we held stock in Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC), we would certainly be wondering about the quality of its technology and be thinking about calling our broker right about now. 

UPDATE 10:15 am July 11, 2017: With no word of explanation, apology or notification to us of any sort from them, we have just discovered - by going online and once checking once again via Symantec's online classification tool [here] - that the site you are currently reading is now re-classified by Symantec. It's no longer a "hate" site. (Of course, it never was a hate site at any stage.)

Our treatment at the hands of this major public company with a global reputation has been shabby and unacceptable. We intend to learn more about what goes on under their sheets.

UPDATE 10:00 pm July 17, 2017: Not one word from anyone at Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ SYMC) - not before they called us a "hate" site; not during; and not after they removed the classification and disappeared. Does this say something about how their management runs the company? Possibly.

UPDATE 3:30 pm July 30, 2017: No one from Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ SYMC) has bothered to make contact with us since we became aware that they were absurdly branding our blog a "hate" site. They silently removed the gag (being branded a hate site means millions of users cannot access it) with no explanation after receiving numerous complaints from our readers. What sort of process or algorithm or polling or black-magic do they use to come up with their "hate" site calculations? Does it stand the test of being reviewed by intelligent and objective outsiders? It's a tremendous amount of power - the power to silence - for a non-regulated Internet services provider. Perhaps government offices ought to be looking into this.

UPDATE 12 noon August 7, 2017: Not a word from Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ SYMC), though we did get two Tweets from a Norton support account identifying itself as"Steffi", offering to do something incoherent on our behalf. In any event, nothing was done, the Symantec stonewalling continues and the cloud over Symantec's hate-classifying business grows ever darker. We do believe the authorities ought to be looking into the unregulated power this company has to gag voices in the social media with zero explanation and zero transparency. Meanwhile we're pleased to note that the post you are reading at this moment has remained the most read of all our posts for thirty consecutive days. We sincerely hope it continues to hold people's attention.

03-Aug-15: Left, right and wrong

Real injuries, real attack, not so real account of
cause-and-effect: Mr Abu Sharah of Lod [Image Source]

As any number of thoughtful commentaries have pointed out in the past 72 hours, Israel is going through some challenging times in the wake of a sudden convergence of incidents in which lives were threatened and/or lost by the actions of Israelis perceived as "representing" a right-wing viewpoint.

You can therefore understand how news platforms of a certain bent would react to a report that seems to extend the run of right-wing malevolence. Not only a wild-eyed right wing Jew with a knife who hurls himself lethally at peaceful marchers in a human-rights parade. Not only a right-wing arson attack on a church connected with a miracle attributed to Jesus. And not only a right-wing firebombing of an Arab family asleep in their home, and death and awful injuries that ensue. But also...

But also

Amad Abu Sharah, a Palestinian citizen and activist from Lydd (Lod in Hebrew), was attacked in the early hours of Sunday morning at the entrance to his house on his way back from morning prayers at a nearby mosque...  A protest denouncing the attack is also scheduled for Sunday evening. The Arab residents of Lydd have been on high alert ever since the arson attack on a Palestinian home in the West Bank village Duma burned an 18-month-old infant to death on Friday... According to his police testimony, Abu Sharah was attacked by a group of religious Jewish men, who were armed with sticks, jumped on him and attacked him before fleeing. Neighbors brought Abu Sharah to Assaf HaRofeh Medical Center, where he is currently hospitalized... ["Palestinian citizen attacked in suspected hate crime", Samah Salaime in +972 Magazine, August 2, 2015 - archived here] 

Ms Salaime, the reporter, without revealing any of her reasons or evidence, shares with readers the concrete suspicions in the air

Activists in Lydd are planning to hold a meeting Sunday in light of the growing tensions between the settlers from the “Garin Torani” (a core group of national-religious Jews who often move into poor, mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhoods in order to strengthen its Jewish character) and the Arab residents of the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood in the north of the city. [+972]

The pressing need for a villain - a right-wing villain - is palpable. (For a less demonizing view of the admirable Garin Torani phenomenon, check out Wikipedia and - yes - Haaretz.)

The Chinese global news syndication agency Xinhua published a similar version of the attack report [see "Israeli Arab injured in central Israel in suspected hate crime attack", Xinhuanet, August 2, 2015 -  archived here], though show a little more care when describing the attackee's citizenship, calling him "Israeli Arab", which certainly sounds right. Recall that for +972, he's "a Palestinian citizen".

To be fair, someone at +972 - perhaps the reporter, perhaps an editor - had some tiny doubts about how well the Lod affair fit with the spirit of the times, and tacked this on at the end of their report:

According to the police, it is unclear whether the attackers were Jewish, and the matter is currently under investigation. [+972]

Turns out that was not a bad call, though neither report has been updated in the past 24 hours. We will be watching to see if they do a revision in view of the following:

An Arab resident of Lod in central was caught fabricating an alleged attack by "Jewish extremists" Sunday morning, as tension remain high over the murder of a young Palestinian child in a terror attack Friday. Imad Abu Sharikh was hospitalized in moderate condition after being severely beaten by a gang of youths Sunday. Abu Sharikh told police he was heading to the mosque when three "right-wing extremists" attacking him, shouting "filthy Arab, expel all the Arabs!" The report quickly made the rounds in the Israeli and Palestinian media, along with pictures of a bloodied and battered Abu Sharikh. The claim that he had been the victim of a racist attack by Jews was particularly sensitive, coming just two days after the death of Ali Dawabsha in an attack believed to have been carried out by Jewish extremists Friday. The leader of the Arab Joint List party MK, Ayman Odeh, rushed to issue a condemnation and blame right-wing "incitement." "Once again an Arab citizen (of Israel) was attacked for nationalistic motives, this time in Lod," Odeh said. "The racist, anti-democratic discourse of ministers and MKs from the Right gives a green light for thugs." ["Lod: Arab Man Fabricates Attack by 'Extremist Jews'", Israel National News, August 2, 2015]

The injuries of Palestinian/Israeli Mr Abu Sharah/Mr Abu Sharikh turn out to be real. But the story? Not so much:

As his version of events continued to unravel, police say it became clear the assault - which really did take place - was in fact the result of a family feud... Police soon arrested the three suspects - all of whom were Arab residents of the city. Speaking to Arutz Sheva, Jewish residents of Lod - who themselves are often targeted in racist attacks by local Arab extremists - voiced their dismay at the rush by some media outlets to immediately buy Abu Sharikh's story without fact-checking. "Again and again we get lectured by the media, while part of the media wants to only hear one side of the story," one resident told Arutz Sheva. "Day and night Jews are bullied in Lod, and if it even reaches the media no one dares to say out loud that the attackers are Arabs." [Israel National News]

We provided archive links above so that if the published +972 and Xinhua reports get updated to reflect the fundamental change in what's known, readers can check for themselves to see how. From experience, we advise not holding breaths.