The TPP’s coming Internet censorship

The agreement by 12 Pacific Rim nations, including the United States, to enact the still-secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is fraught with dangers for the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment on freedoms of the press and speech. The pact agreed upon by the 12 nations in Atlanta reportedly contains provisions that could be used by governments, parastatal corporations, and multinational corporations to initiate an international version of what is known in the United States as “SLAPP suits.”

SLAPP suits are brought by corporations seeking costly punitive damages against public advocacy groups, bloggers, websites, and individual journalists for exposing wrongdoing by, among others, corporate polluters, manufacturers of unsafe items, the genetically-modified food industry, and even governments. Critics of the TPP argue that because the agreement is a huge giveaway to corporations at the expense of the general public, freedom of expression and speech on the Internet will suffer.

There is also the clear danger that the entertainment industry and their intellectual property lawyers will try to use the TPP to enact the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which did not pass Congress when it was first introduced in 2012. SOPA would have restricted file sharing, fair use of photographs, film clips, and written text, and put into place other draconian copyright protection measures that would have restricted freedom of speech on the Internet and could have even led to the U.S. government’s blocking of certain websites. TPP critics believe that because the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives can only vote up or down on the TPP, without offering any amendments, Hollywood and the recording industry ensured that SOPA-like provisions were entered into the TPP.

What has Internet freedom advocates worried about the secret content of the TPP agreement is that President Obama appointed a lobbyist who worked on enacting SOPA, Robert Holleyman, to the U.S. team of TPP negotiators.

With the specter of the TPP looming over the Internet, it is not only the U.S. government that poses a danger to Internet speech and content. One of the TPP nations, Singapore, is notorious for using its Defamation Act and other censorship measures to curtail criticism of Singapore, both within the country and abroad. The TPP will give Singapore unfettered access to the courts of other TPP nations, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, to bring defamation law suits against journalists, book authors, and bloggers. American journalists could find themselves in the same position as British journalist Alan Shadrake, who was arrested by Singapore for writing a book titled, “Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore’s Justice in the Dock,” which was critical of Singapore’s death penalty.

This editor found himself on the receiving end of a Singapore libel threat after writing an article in 1995 on Singapore’s documented cases of stamping valid visas in the passports of “micronations,” including one, the “Dominion of Melchizedek,” a criminal enterprise that sold citizenships and novelty passports at a steep price. Singapore’s government, which hired censors who scoured the written press and the nascent Internet’s bulletin board systems for anything deemed critical of Singapore, initiated an action with my publisher in England. However, when confronted with documentation showing that Singapore did, indeed, stamp valid visas in Melchizedek passports, Singapore backed down from its threat to sue me and my publisher in the British court system, which is notorious for acquiescing to libel suits from foreign interests.

Since Melchizedek claims its passports have continued to receive valid visas from TPP members Brunei and Malaysia, a nightmare scenario would be for the cyber-scam operation to file in a TPP signatory jurisdiction, a successful suit against critics, similar to the one it filed in the United States against CBS for a 2000 “60 Minutes II” piece on the fake and felonious country. Melchizedek unsuccessfully sought a $1 billion libel judgment against CBS, 60 Minutes II, producer Janet Klein, and correspondent Scott Pelley.

In 2015, Singapore blogger Roy Ngerng was ordered to pay confiscatory and financial ruining damages after being found guilty of defaming Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Hsien Loong. Ngerng blogged that Lee had defrauded Singapore’s pension system, the Central Provident Fund.

Lee’s negotiators at the TPP talks likely drove home Lee’s views on Internet freedom of speech. Lee is on record as saying, “Freedom of speech does not come free from the need to be responsible for what one says, either online or offline.” Lee’s views on freedom of speech are in total opposition to the spirit of the U.S. Constitution. However, it is still not known, because of TPP secrecy, what avenues a prime censor like Lee could utilize within the TPP framework to silence his critics in other TPP nations.

Malaysia and Brunei, two other TPP signatories, have also taken action against web sites, journalists, and bloggers for articles unfavorable to their countries.

Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, is a voracious opponent of Internet freedom of speech. After the UK-based website Sarawak Report reported that Najib had looted $700 million from a state investment fund, the Malaysian Development Berhad, and transferred the money into his private account, Malaysia, using the Communications and Multimedia Act of 1998, blocked access to the Sarawak Report citing its “content which is false, menacing, or offensive” and the site’s “improper use of network facilities or network service.”

Bruneian law allows for journalists to be jailed for up to three years for reporting “false and malicious” news. Taking a page from the censorship book of Lee and his cronies in Singapore, Brunei considers “false and malicious” news to be anything critical of the Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, the royal family, or the draconian Saudi-like provisions of the Malay Islamic monarchy system of government, including the adoption of Sharia law.

Under the TPP, Brunei could bring SLAPP-like lawsuits against public interest groups that are boycotting the Beverly Hills Hotel and its Dorchester Collection chain because it is owned by the Sultan of Brunei, whose domestic laws demand that homosexuals and adulterers be stoned to death. Ironically, the Beverly Hills Hotel has, for decades, been the scene of numerous Hollywood gay and adulterous trysts. Celebrities like Jay Leno, Richard Branson, and Ellen DeGeneres, who have led the boycott campaign against the sultan’s hotels, could find themselves in court facing libel, defamation, and anti-competition charges brought by Brunei within the TPP framework. First Amendment protections could very well be trumped by the TPP. Although Leno, Branson, and DeGeneres have enough money to weather any legal misuse of the TPP, other, less wealthy bloggers and activists, would not stand a chance against the Lees, Najibs, and Sultan Hassanal Bolkiahs of the TPP region.

Congress has the opportunity to protect the First Amendment rights of all Americans by giving the TPP a decisive “thumbs down.”

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2015 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).