All Out PNG Social Media War Against Corruption

Witch Hunts To Expose Anonymous Whistleblowers Against Corruption, the Growing Impact of PNG Courts of Public Opinion, And Illustrative Cases of Sonja Barry Ramoi, Susan Merrell and American Actor Bill Cosby

by A Retired PC Journalist

Brief History of Anonymous Political Free Speech

Anonymous free speech was only able to start after people moved to big cities where no one hardly knew anyone in those large populations.  This environment created the possibility for anonymous speech that living in the countryside did not.  Early effective anonymous political postings occurred in Rome at several ‘talking statues’ over 500 years ago  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_statues_of_Rome).   

Rome’s Pasquino ‘talking’ statue.  Anonymous political comments have been posted for more than 500 years at the base of this and several other statues around Rome.   

Forming the constitution of the USA involved 3 founding fathers going underground and anonymously posting and publishing the “Federalist Papers” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers).   Having such respectable Fathers of Independence writing under Fake Pen Names copied a tradition of anonymous political expression that had gone on for ages in England as well as France, and was done to separate the message from the messenger, so that the messages would be considered without bias.    

There are sound reasons for making political comments under an anonymous pen name.   Anonymously penned expressions are nearly always sharper and more honest than if written under one’s real name.  That helps get unpleasant truths out into the open for all to know.    Going anonymous also gives the writer freedom from intimidation.   Those being accused find it hard to intimidate the accuser into silence if they do not know their identity.  If they knew the writer’s identities, they could easily use illegal and legal ways to silence the voices.  Going underground and becoming anonymous gives a whistleblower the level of power more equivalent to that of the corrupt leader whose wrongdoing they are exposing.   That contributes in a positive way to achieving justice.  

The USA, where Facebook is located, has strong protection of anonymous free speech.  Here is what a Supreme Court Justice wrote in one ruling protecting anonymous speech:  "Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority…. to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."

In recent years “Anonymous” is a global group of corruption and injustice fighters who operate anonymously as effective way to fight very powerful opponents (https://www.facebook.com/anonymousforjustice/).   They started out as anonymous hackers.  Today you can find Anonymous followers wearing the characteristic mask even at demonstrations.   Anonymity gives power to those who otherwise would have little.   This is essential when a social activist fights  against an opponent with overwhelming power.   It is like David fighting Goliath.   Becoming anonymous increases the height of David to be more evenly matched to Goliath.   The fight becomes more fair and the results more powerful.  Again, this is a contribution to achieving greater justice.   

We Are Anonymous is a worldwide movement of faceless whistleblowers and hackers fighting against the corrupt.   It is now becoming active on the PNG social media.  

Anonymity Gives Corruption Fighters A Chance In Their Struggle Against Injustice

In recent years governments worldwide have become oppressingly powerful.  Alliances between wealthy businessmen have grown to influence those governments into doing things not in the best interest of the people as a whole.   Citizens as a whole have become like small Davids against very Giant Goliaths.  Anonymous fighters have popped up throughout the world to fight these Giant Goliaths.  

Facebook Promotes Anonymity Through Strong Privacy Protection  

Facebook does not sanction Fake Accounts yet host the Anonymous Facebook site.  Their practice is more relaxed than their stated policy.  Anonymity is common on social media.  Google+ totally supports pen names.  Facebook estimates at least 80 million of its accounts are fake.  There is a special need for women to be able to use pseudonyms on Facebook when interacting on large open or closed groups.  Certain countries or provinces within countries strongly protect the right to not use one’s real name.  

Facebook purposely enhanced its users ability to stay anonymous against snooping governments when they established encrypted https internet access for all of Facebook.  This means that those snooping on intermediary servers between your smart phone or computer and the Facebook servers cannot see what Facebook page you are visiting and what you are writing on posts and comments.  Such information is known only by you and Facebook.  

Facebook now recommends using TOR anonymity application (see https://www.torproject.org/), not only for computers but for android phones.  This makes it even harder for governments to snoop on your Facebook activities.    All these privacy enhancing features encourage anonymity (http://www.wired.com/2015/06/new-facebook-feature-shows-actual-respect-privacy/).

Facebook’s specific privacy enhancing mechanisms gives social activists extra power and control over oppressive governments that want to suppress free speech.     

Social Media Anonymity, Does It Promote Criminal Activity?

People fear that the privacy enhancing features on Facebook encourage abuse, including cyberstalking. This is not true.  Facebook itself can still see what IP you are coming from whenever you use Facebook and it can report criminal activity to the authorities.  Its privacy enhancing features only keep any middleman server or relay point from seeing what you are doing on Facebook. That keeps the PNG government from being able to discover what you do on Facebook.  

However if you are breaking United States laws, a judge in America can grant a court order to force Facebook to turn over computer logs.   Facebook will then give that information to the authorities, who can proceed with their investigation.  

Facebook usually avoids such actions by removing sites, postings or users who are breaking USA law.  If the postings remain despite reader complaints, as is true for nearly all political free speech, it means no laws in the USA are being broken.  It is lawful throughout Europe and the United States to use pen names on the internet instead of real names.  

Anonymous Commenters On Internet Out of Reach of PNG Government  

It would be close to impossible for any PNG public figure or the PNG government to obtain a court order forcing Facebook to release its computer logs.   This is because the USA has famously loose defamation laws with respect to any public figure, political or otherwise.   This holds for criminal and civil defamation.   What is illegal to say against a public figure in PNG would rarely be illegal in the USA nor in most developed countries.  PNG’s defamation laws are old fashioned British defamation law only preferred today by dictatorships.   

Facebook has no legal obligation to assist with investigations into the breaking of PNG laws, North Korean laws, or any other country’s free speech suppression legislation because it is not registered in PNG nor does it do formal business here.  

This means that the only way the PNG government has a chance of learning who does what on Facebook is to seize the smart phone or computer of a suspected culprit.  Smarter users can take precautions against seizure.  This includes password encrypted memory and hard drives to ensure that the PNG government finds nothing even after seizure.   

The PNG government has no way to block specific Facebook sites.   All it could do would be to block all of Facebook and that would not affect those who access internet using satellite.   This means that the PNG government has no way of preventing people within PNG from accessing The PNG News Page, Niugini Outlook, or PNG Blogs on Facebook.   All the URL subdomains (in other words, the specific Facebook sites you are looking at) are encrypted by the https protocol both Facebook and Google now use, which hides the specific pages you visit on those sites from snooping government eyes.  

The only countries in the world that blocks Facebook totally is China, North Korea and Iran.  China offers government developed Facebook substitutes for its citizens to use, whose content it can monitor.  This is very sophisticated workaround, which the PNG government has no capacity to do.  

PNG government can block access within PNG to non-Facebook web sites for those who access internet from fibre optic cables.  Unlike Facebook, blog site content is not encrypted.  This allows oppressive governments to block access to sites or specific web pages within those sites.  However, citizens in China and elsewhere secretly use one or more of the many third party workarounds, including VPN tunneling, to access whatever sites they want irrespective of government censorship.   

Anonymous Postings:  Hated By Many In PNG But Necessary In Any Democracy

As Papua New Guineans we tend to instinctively prefer features of dictatorships.  For example, we automatically show respect to even the most corrupt leaders.  This goes opposite to what promotes high accountability by public figures in countries that enjoy low corruption.  In PNG, certain cultural beliefs encourage dictators to take control of us.   This includes an almost instinctive negative reaction against  those who criticize our leaders too harshly, no matter how well warranted.  

That explains why on the PNG social media, some users easily get annoyed by and turn away from strong dialogue and debate.  When strong talkers come from faceless profiles, our reaction, without thinking, is to demand that those faceless posters be banned.   

In the current crisis involving PNG university student boycotts and the Prime Minister’s refusal to step down, the “fake profiles” commenting on FB sites has increased.   Those profiles came from 2 totally different sources.  Anti-government posters used fake profiles to protect themselves from being intimidated into silence by their much more powerful opponents.   On the other hand Pro-government posters use fake profiles to make one poster look like many.  The objective is to make government propaganda look like it is coming from everyday people instead of a hated government.  

Some PNG social media users demand that all fake profiles be removed, no matter what opinions those profiles post, or how useful the information.   This demand is ironic considering the proud history of anonymity in countries such as England, United States, France and Italy, which enjoy healthy democracies and relatively low levels of corruption.  In developed countries, not only is anonymity tolerated, it is often promoted.  

Anonymous whistleblowing against corruption is purposely allowed and protected in Australia and other developed countries.  Someone can report wrongdoing within government or a company to the authorities without giving their identity or name.   Not knowing who makes an allegation does make investigation more difficult.   However, investigation is still possible and wrongdoers are commonly caught and convicted on the basis of anonymous reports.    This reality reflects a saying:  “Focus on the message, not the messenger.”     

In PNG we get too concerned about faceless comments because our history in the village is of knowing who said what at all times.   That mindset still occupies our brains even though today nearly everyone on social media doesn’t live in a village, but in a PNG city that is interconnected with many other places.   Our adversity towards Faceless Nameless Commenters is like an obsolete artifact which helps the corrupt more than it helps the righteous.  

Failure To Use A Fake Profile on the PNG Media:   Case of Sonja Barry Ramoi

Corrupt and powerful public figures detest any detractor who threatens to disempower them.   This fits the situation with Peter O’Neill and many of his associates.  

Until 2015, commenters on the social media were mostly ignored by the PNG government.   Peter O’Neill changed all that by taking out civil defamation charges against social media activists Noah Anjo and Sonja Barry Ramoi as Facebook site administrators.  Back then Barry Ramoi was an active and avid Belden Namah fan and frequent critic of the PM.   

Bryan Krammer was also subjected to legal assault by those he has written about on social media, another easy target because he probably always comments by name.   

It is not criticism against a government or its leaders that creates motivation to silence the voices.  It is more the kind of criticism and how effectively it is delivered.   Gifted journalists have been killed by government agents in many countries after they started attracting too much loyal following.  If the journalist criticizes an authoritarian government in a way that only makes people yawn, they often are left alone and the government points to them as being examples of the government’s tolerance for free speech, which does not reflect the bigger picture.    

   

Krammer, Barry Ramoi, and Anjo became examples that if you are effective in your dissent against the O’Neill government, you can expect to be pursued and silenced.   Anjo and Krammer have not been silenced yet, but Barry Ramoi has.  

Sonja Barry Ramoi:  Not Anonymous & Subsequently Trapped Into Surrender?

If Barry Ramoi were not a light skinned female and her comments had not been reasonably sharp and annoying to the PM, she might have been ignored in the same way as nearly everyone who critics the PM on the social media.  Instead she displayed areas of vulnerability and the PM went after her.   

Barry Ramoi was exceptionally vulnerable due to her unstable marriage to Gabriel Ramoi, a former MP who spent time in prison for election fraud in the 1990s and who is in the government’s employ.  For a time, Sonja Barry Ramoi effectively became Opposition leader Belden Namah’s informal media master but was hoping to make this job a formal, paid one.  When Don Polye became Opposition Leader those hopes were crushed.   

The legal costs Peter O’Neill imposed with his defamation case, her costly periods of exile in Australia caused by the case, and husband Gabriel’s abandoning financial support once he moved to Singapore, forced Sonja Barry Ramoi into a type of prostitution.   

Gabriel Ramoi approached Treasury Minister Patrick Pruaitch about the government giving his wife a job and that request was passed up to the PM.   Today Ramoi Barry works for the PM’s office as a media person.  She has set up social media sites such as PNG Pulse designed to counteract existing sites that allow criticism of the PM and other corrupt officials.  The new sites are intended to create the illusion of free speech, while ensuring that any effective criticism against the PM especially is censored.  This is similar to The National newspaper’s traditional censoring of any criticism against the logging carried out by its owner, Rimbunan Hijau (RH).  

Barry Ramoi would have never been trapped into this depressing sellout situation had she kept her identity secret as an internet site administrator, as is commonplace throughout the world.   Nothing she said was in the least defamatory in a normal developed country that enjoys true democracy.  

Barry Ramoi now intimidates others similar to how Peter O’Neill intimidated her.   For example on 19 June on Voice of PNG (the Closed Group with 2500 members, not the Noah Anjo Closed Group with over 60000 members), she demanded to the administrators in a public comment that a link to a posting on another site critical of the PM be removed.  Within minutes, she followed up her first comment by naming the administrators and telling them they could be legally liable if they did not remove the posting:

Sonja Barry Ramoi’s demand for censorship and her exposure of the administrators of a Voice of PNG Facebook page.  

Note that in her first comment, she acted as if she did not know who the administrators were, when probably she did.  She also demanded that the person posting the link, Mark Joseph be banned from the site.  

If Barry Ramoi’s purpose was not to intimidate the FB site administrators, she could have privately messaged them.  By exposing their identities, Barry Ramoi effectively compromised the administrators’  ability in the future to allow the level of free speech one typically finds in in Australia, USA, most European Union countries and even some Asian countries.     

Any effective political critic on the PNG social media is at high risk if they do not create Faceless Nameless profiles.  Having a known identity makes them easily subjected to blackmail, public exposure, or otherwise be silenced, perhaps permanently.  This includes not only those who post but also administrators.  

Susan Merrell:  Collaborating With the Corrupt To Silence Dissent

As a self styled journalist commenting on PNG issues and personalities, Merrell wrote articles that originally gained praise from many corners.  No one doing wrong was spared her literary knives.  She provided decent documentation for her allegations and her commentary became shaming enough that  Don Polye was driven to comment on her PNG Echo site.   As happens with any public figure who is lying, Polye didn’t last long in the debate.  He quickly disappeared when challenged by Merrell on specific points. Anyone reading the dialogue objectively likely reached the conclusion that the corruption allegations were true.     

Susan Merrell’s commentary is usually still sound quality but last year her targets conspicuously changed to the point where recently she saluted David Arore, one of PNG’s best known corrupt MPs for winning a by election.  It took only a few months for Susan Merrell to change from hitting any and all targets to becoming conspicuously pro-Peter O’Neill government.

Doubtfully this sudden switch was caused by intimidation.  Alternative theory is that Merrell has an idea to use sweet articles and rely partly on Tiffany Twivvey Nonggor (herself now a prostitute of sorts to the PM due to her personal weakness of extravagant overspending and personal financial debt) to get enough of an Insider perspective to eventually write a tell all book published in Australia about political goings on inside the PNG government.  This would well utilize her literary talents and abundantly feed her narcissistic personality.   This is speculation advanced by others.   Merrell can let the speculation lie or refute it head on by publishing a full explanation that focuses solely on how she came to turn such a quick about face in her perspectives about Peter O’Neill and his government.  But if she dares write such an essay while hiding the truth, lengthy commentaries reveal the truth anyway.  Probably she will stay silent.   

Like Barry Ramoi, Merrell recently turned her intimidation in an interesting direction on PNG Echo:

Susan Merrell’s veiled threats against Paul Reinbara, founder of PNG Blogs.  

Why such a naked personal threat to expose the identity of Paul Reinbara, aligning herself in the process with repressors?   Its an obvious attempt to intimidate Reinbara and his associates into silence.  Either revealing Reinbara’s real name or turning off the lights on PNG Blogs would destroy Reinbara’s power, which today presents a significant challenge to the O’Neill government’s corruption as usual.   Reinbara is an effective critic of the government.  That’s the only reason why he would now be chased and actively investigated.

Merrell has essentially argued in the article that the tactics used by Reinbara and company against the corrupt are inexcusable and that alone is why Reinbara should be exposed.   In the bigger picture, outing Reinbara could well destroy the PNG anticorruption movement, considering how little information the PNG public ever learnt about the inner workings of corruption in PNG before PNG Blogs existed.   Only PNG Exposed could possibly fill the gap and probably the government allows it to remain because it shows all outward appearances of being not often visited, does not actively spread its information, and contains articles that are sometimes too technical for the general PNG public to easily digest.    

When Accused Public Figures Won’t Defend Themselves On Social Media:  Bill Cosby Example

The internet and social media changed everything about seeking justice in today’s world but corrupt PNG public figures remain behind the times.   Public figures who feel wrongly accused have many options to post their side of the story and defend themselves with facts and figures as necessary.  If ongoing court cases technically prevent them from speaking in public about the issues, they can always set up a Fake Profile as a pretend ‘Insider’ and still give their side of the story.  In other words, there is no valid reason to hold back with one’s defence.  

Even before electronic media, there were informal Courts of Public Opinion, where public outrage in reaction to news articles caused public shaming and sometimes resignation of public officials.  Sometimes formal government prosecutions followed.  If PNG public figures think they are being unfairly treated or shouted at on the PNG social media, they should give thanks that they aren’t living in almost any developed country.

Trial by media.  While many complain about the unfairness of the Court of Public Opinion, in general the verdicts rendered have proven to be accurate.  Courts of Public Opinion have emerged most strongly in situations where citizens deem the traditional judicial system is no longer rendering justice in a speedy, accurate way.     

A  famous recent Court of Public Opinion example in the USA involves the once beloved television star  Bill Cosby.  Cosby was being accused of drugging and raping numerous women he befriended.   Authorities didn’t believe the women because they didn’t have proof.  But at least one civil suit was settled by a cash payout by Cosby.  

Trial bv media of Bill Cosby.  The government followed the Court of Public Opinion and will now be putting Bill Cosby on trial for rape.   Once again the people spoke first, as would be expected in a democracy.   

Over the last year or so, the dam of silence by victims has broken.   Many women victims have now come forward.  A massive and influential Court of Public Opinion resulted.  Cosby was found guilty by that informal system of justice after he refused to defend himself before it.   His reputation is now destroyed, he can’t earn money anymore doing tours and the government in USA has announced they will prosecute Bill Cosby over one of the more recent incidents.  

Maybe Cosby’s brain was trapped in the pre-internet era and that is why he never tried to defend himself against the Court of Public Opinion.   More likely he stayed silent because he is guilty.  

The Cosby case should teach a big lesson to PNG public figures.   Our public officials also have many available opportunities to reply to allegations made against them in the social media.  If they choose not to, they will likely be found guilty in the PNG Court of Public Opinion and end up shamed or worse.  As more people in PNG access the internet, informal Courts of Public Opinion will become more powerful.   PNG’s corrupt public officials will no longer be able to evade justice the way they now successfully do by obstructing the traditional police and courts.  

Peter O’Neill and his associates would want to expose the identity of their most effective faceless critics on the social media so they can weaken what are becoming even matches between themselves and their Faceless fighters against corruption.  They want things to go back to the traditional Small David versus Giant Goliath style competitions where Goliath (i.e. corrupt PNG officials) always used to win.  

Limitations of Anonymity

There were few standalone leaders in the successful revolutions against tyrant during the Arab Spring revolutions in different countries several years ago.  In Algeria, for example, Twitter and social media simply got people to simultaneously take to the streets and the awesome people power presence alone frightened the corrupt into exile.   However in general Anonymous voices are more likely to play a role in informing and motivating people to become more activist themselves.  No one on the social media should expect social media activity alone to lead to kind of protests in the streets that make these movements successful.  

Truth Prevails When Whistleblowers Make Abundant Information Available To the Public

Corrupt leaders and public officials in PNG have successfully kept so much information hidden and successfully intimidated nearly everyone so that no one dares reveal the secrets.  So long as this continues, PNG will slide further into authoritarianism and destruction of a functional democracy.

PNG’s only hope is for more activists to take root and to arm themselves with whatever weapons allow them to effectively defeat corruption by exposing its secrets.   Anonymity is one of the most effective tools, not only in PNG, but historically in Europe and America, and commonly throughout the world, in being able to expose corruption secrets without fear.      

Facebook helps those who use their free speech rights by incorporating several devices that now make it very hard for any government to snoop behind the scenes and find out who is using what Facebook profile and making what comments on what sites.

Supporting Anonymity on the PNG social media is an excellent way to support the kind of effective free speech that the Peter O’Neill government now wants to silence.