AntiWar.com – 2015-03-20 00:40:35
Google Disables All Ads on Antiwar.com
— Because We Have a Page Showing the Abu Ghraib Abuses
AntiWar.com
(March 18, 2015) — On 3/18/15 we received a note from Google Adsense informing us that all ads for our site had been disabled. Why? Because of this page showing the horrific abuses committed by US troops in Iraq at Abu Ghraib.
This page has been up for 11 years. During all that time Google Adsense has been running ads on our site — but as Washington gets ready to re-invade Iraq, and in bombing, killing, and abusing more civilians, they suddenly decide that their “anti-violence” policy, which prohibits “disturbing material,” prohibits any depiction of violence committed by the US government and paid for with your tax dollars.
This page [1] is the third-most-visited page in our history, getting over 2 million page views since it was posted.
To say this is an utter outrage would be an understatement: it is quite simply the kind of situation one might expect to encounter in an authoritarian country where state-owned or state-connected companies routinely censor material that displeases the government.
Is Google now an arm of the US State Department?
ACTION ALERT: This is a big hit on our funding. You can bet the boys in Washington don’t like us and would just love to shut us down. Don’t let them get away with it! We need your help today, and you can do that in two ways:
1. Abu Ghraib page [2]. No way, no how!
Please make your tax-deductible donation today. [3]
2. Contact Google ads and give them a piece of your mind. Tell them that you don’t appreciate their efforts on behalf of the Washington censors and demand that they reinstate us immediately.
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheater Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
Telephone: 650-253-0000
You can also interact with Google at their forum [4]
Thank you to all our supporters.
You can confirm that Antiwar.com is being blocked by going to Adsenseblockchecker [5].
Here is the text of the email received from Google Adsense:
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 05:43:39 +0000
Subject: Google AdSense ad serving has been disabled to your site
From: adsense-noreply@google.com
To: adsense-noreply@google.com
Hello,
This message is to alert you that one of your websites is not currently in compliance with our AdSense program policies and as a result, ad serving has been disabled to your website.
Issue ID#: 33539611
Ad serving has been disabled to: antiwar.com
Example page where violation occurred: http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=8560
Action required: Check all other remaining sites in your account for compliance.
Current account status: Active
Violation explanation
VIOLENCE/GORE: As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with violent or disturbing content, including sites with gory text or images.
More information about this policy can be found in our help center (https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1348688?utm_source=crs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=notificationhl=en&answer=105954).
VIOLENCE: As stated in our program policies, AdSense publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with violent content. This includes sites with content related to breaking bones, getting hit by trains or cars, or people receiving serious injuries.
More information about this policy can be found in our help center (https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1348688?utm_source=crs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=notificationhl=en&answer=105954 ).
Action Required: Check account for compliance
While ad serving has been disabled to the above site, your AdSense account remains active. Please be aware that the URL above is just an example and that the same violations may exist on other pages of this website or other sites you own.
Therefore, we suggest that you take the time to review the rest of your sites to ensure that they are in compliance with our policies, and to monitor your sites accordingly to reduce the likelihood of future policy emails from us. Additionally, please note that our team reserves the right to disable accounts at any time if we continue to see violations occurring.
Appeals
If you wish to appeal this disabling then you can do so by using the Issue ID listed above to contact us via our Help Center: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/113061?utm_source=crs&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=notificationhl=en&answer=113061.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Footnotes:
[1] This page: ‪http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=8560‬
[2] Abu Ghraib page: ‪http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444‬
[3] Please make your tax-deductible donation today.: ‪http://antiwar.com/donate‬
[4] at their forum: ‪https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/websearch‬
[5] Adsenseblockchecker: ‪http://www.adsenseblockchecker.com‬
NSA Infiltration of Google, Yahoo Even Deeper Than Feared
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(October 30, 2013) — The NSA’s PRISM scheme was the first big scandal broken in months of ever more egregious violations of privacy at home and abroad. Google and Yahoo were among a number of major companies implicated in handing over broad swathes of customer’s private data, but apparently that was just the tip of the iceberg, even for data on Google and Yahoo’s servers.
The NSA apparently decided that even PRISM’s appalling levels of data collection weren’t enough, and the NSA still tapped both companies’ data centers on top of that, collecting data and meta-data of Americans and other innocent civilians en masse.
A hand-drawn sketch serves as part of the NSA’s presentation on “Google Cloud Exploitation” as part of the MUSCULAR project. The project culled 181 million pieces of data in meta-data in just a single 30 day period.
Google issued a statement saying they were “outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks,” while Yahoo simply denied giving the NSA access to their data centers. Which of course was the whole idea of MUSCULAR — unlike the PRISM cooperation, Yahoo and Google weren’t supposed to know.
The 24-hour surveillance of Google and Yahoo’s servers, above and beyond the cooperation they were already forced to give them, even shocked former intelligence officials, who worried it was not only ruining the government’s working relationship with such companies, but undermining those companies’ credibility internationally.
At this point it is apparent that not just personal data explicitly stored on Google’s servers, like gmail boxes and Google documents, but also any conceivable meta-data that even touches Google’s cloud, like the timing of an individual IP address viewing an individual Youtube video, has potentially been intercepted by the NSA, and is in some database somewhere waiting for some official to decide it might be used against somebody.
The NSA, predictably, issued a blanket denial, insisting it “never happened” despite clear documentation. Such denials and their subsequent refutations have become a defining feature of the past few months, and at this point reek of desperation.
Below are the current relevant stories
• NSA Steals Google, Yahoo Users’ Data
• How NSA Collects Too Much Data From Yahoo and Google
• NSA Chief Denies Yahoo/Google Hacking Allegations
• Google, Yahoo Furious Over Reports That NSA Intercepts Data Links
• NSA Bombshell Shocks Former Spooks: ‘Why in the World Would We Burn Google?’
• PRISM Already Gave the NSA Access to Tech Giants. Here’s Why It Wanted More.
• Even After NSA Revelations, Yahoo Won’t Say if It Plans to Encrypt Data Center Traffic
• 6 Steps Silicon Valley Can Take to Protect Users From NSA Spying
• Former Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge Doesn’t Want the NSA Looking at His Emails
Posted in accordance with Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
