An ongoing scandal in the U.S. press is that a CBS editor killed a story by insisting that it could not run without an official response from the administration, who declined to give that official response. As critics pointed out, this effectively hands the government a veto in which they can stop stories by refusing to comment.

I had a similar problem with the Indian press in 2022. I could not convince any Indian news outlet to report publicly on the fact that LS Speaker Om Birla had refused to respond to the parliamentary vote to invite me to testify, and was therefore blocking it indefinitely. The reason I could not convince them to report publicly on the matter was... Speaker Birla also refused to respond to their requests for comment on the matter, and they would not publish without an official response from him.

No amount of pointing out the irony of the situation convinced them to change their mind. In the end, I resolved the conundrum by Tweeting about it and having that tweet go mildly viral, upon which they were able to publish on the matter after all (presumably because of the fear that their journalistic rivals would scoop them.)

But I find it striking that what is a significant journalistic scandal in the United States was, apparently, journalistic common practice during my interaction with India's press.

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/22/g-s1-103282/cbs-chief-bari-weiss-pulls-60-minutes-story

This piece of work was the first President I caught red-handed back in 2018. His social media manager didn't even try to hide from FB the fact that he was also running hundreds of fake assets pretending to be Hondurans supporting JOH to cover up his sheer unpopularity, even while the President sent his soldiers into the street to shoot protesters.

I hadn't known at the time that he was also smuggling drugs into the U.S. Now he's going to be pardoned?

#FueraJOH

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/nyregion/honduras-hernandez-drug-trafficking.html

When I testified to the UK parliament on the #OnlineSafetyAct in 2022, I was very concerned about the possibility of gutting end-to-end encryption and directed some of my testimony in that direction. In retrospect, I should have also found room to voice my serious privacy concerns regarding age verification.

I know that many nations and governments are rolling out mobile ID technology - the UK for instance is in the process of rolling out GOV.UK Wallet, a government-run way to store secure documents such as digital driver's licenses and other credentials. I think people would feel much more comfortable with the idea of age verification if it were done automatically via a government ID app, rather than being forced to provide their identification to thousands of sites of questionable trustworthiness, most of which do not want to be checking user IDs to begin with.

"Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone."

- Anne Frank, January 13 1943

I'll be speaking at SXSW 2025 #sxsw

https://schedule.sxsw.com/2025/events/PP148017

"The aggressor is always peace-loving (as Bonaparte always claimed to be); he would prefer to take over our country unopposed."

- Clausewitz, On War. Book 6, Chp 5

Vinod Kumar Sonkar (BJP - Kaushambi), LS Chair of Ethics, looks to be decisively defeated.

I doubt it had anything to do with my revelation of his use of fake accounts to support his electioneering, but I still consider it a victory. #india #LokSabhaElection2024 #mastindia