In November, Appin Training Centers, which describes itself as a cybersecurity company and an educational consulting firm, began a global censorship campaign that involved sending legal letters to newsrooms and organizations to remove a Reuters investigation that named the company.

This effort not only targeted Reuters, but newsrooms across the globe, including MuckRock.

Despite their efforts, our latest story — “The Association of Appin Training Centers is waging a global censorship campaign to stop you from reading these documents” — goes into detail about how MuckRock and DocumentCloud will continue to host these documents for public access.

This censorship effort caught the attention of the Freedom of the Press Foundation and its director of advocacy, Seth Stern, who wrote about the case on the organization’s website.

In an interview, Stern said the tactics used by Appin went beyond merely a legal request to take down the original reporting, which explored Appin’s advertised “hacking-for-hire” services. Not only has the company requested the removal of the Reuters investigation and all primary-source documents, but Appin targeted Google to “deindex” the story from its search algorithm and requested tech companies “block or ban the accounts” of journalists behind the story.

In his story, Stern notes how the administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is “infamous for its crackdowns on speech and the press, especially online” and how Appin has worded their takedown letters to “plant that fear in the recipients’ minds that you are somehow messing with the powers that be in India and that this is not just about one private company.”

Despite the story’s removal, Stern noted that the Appin censorship tactic has also resulted in a kind of “Steisand effect,” named after singer Barbara Streisand’s failed attempt to keep photos of her home hidden from the internet.

The coverup is now the story.

“If you Google, ‘Appin’ now, you’re probably gonna find more bad press over its censorship campaign than you would have found a year ago over reports of its alleged hacker-for-hire operations,” he said.

The Update

• Microsoft launches newsroom AI journalism initiatives: Microsoft is launching collaborations with several newsrooms to adopt generative AI, including Semafor, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, the Online News Association and others, writes Laura Hazard Owen at the Nieman Journalism Lab. Microsoft has also invested $13 billion in OpenAI, the company that created Chat GPT.

• Challenges to Virginia’s “working papers” exemption: The nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has filed two separate legal challenges to government officials’ broad interpretation of the “working papers” exemption in Virginia. The organization argues that some public officials are misusing the exemption to withhold records.

• New Jersey judge rules in favor of newsroom: A New Jersey Superior Court judge ruled that the Newark Public Schools have 20 days to “remove all redactions” from a settlement agreement between the Board of Education and a real estate developer rebuilding a dilapidated historic school using taxpayer funds. The case was filed by TAPinto Newark, after filing three Open Public Records Act requests to the school district, reports Matt Kadosh in TAPinto Newark.

FOIA Finds

• Get your bridge documents here: The Providence Journal submitted an Access to Public Records Act request to obtain more than 200 emails by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation following the Washington Bridge closure, which caused a major traffic backup to commuters in the area. The newsroom has made those emails available on DocumentCloud, after paying $450.

• Report reveals how ICE uses solitary confinement: A new report conducted by researchers at Physicians for Human Rights, Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School reveals that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement used solitary confinement at its detention facilities more than 14,000 times between 2018 and 2023, including one detainee who was held for 759 days. The report was based on internal ICE records at 125 detention facilities obtained through litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, reports Andrea Castillo at the Los Angeles Times.

• Records on Mattis’ work with the UAE: The Washington Post sued the Marine Corps and U.S. State Department under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose records about retired military service members employed by foreign governments. These records reveal how retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis’ work as a personal consultant for the United Arab Emirates, reports Post journalists Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones.