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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 01 Jul 2009
This week, an open letter appeared on Chinese blogs and online bulletin boards. “Hello, internet censorship institutions of the Chinese government,” it said. “We are the anonymous netizens. We hereby decide that from July 1 2009, we will start a full-scale global attack on all censorship systems you control.”
Beijing’s attempts to manipulate the internet would, the message predicted, “soon be swept on to the rubbish pile of history”.
Chinese internet users, although skilled at dodging the censors, are angrier than they have ever been. The anonymous declaration of war is just one sign of the strains emerging as the global spread of internet access, and its embrace by activists of all stripes, triggers an unprecedented crackdown by national governments that threatens to transform the way hundreds of millions of people communicate.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 01 Jul 2009
Saudi Arabia leads the field among Arab regimes that practise internet censorship, blocking website content ranging from pornography to politics, but also in waging a highly effective online war against al-Qaida and other jihadi groups.
According to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), the conservative kingdom operates a "sophisticated" filtering system run by the internet services unit at King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology in the capital Riyadh.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 01 Jul 2009
No minister will show tomorrow to face legal, ethical and technical questions from MPs and peers on government plans to massively increase surveillance of the internet.
The new All Party Parliamentary Group on Privacy will hold its first hearing on Wednesday on the Interception Modernisation Programme, a multi-billion-pound plan to store details of every VoIP call, email, web browsing session and more.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 30 Jun 2009
This list presents 287 internet sites currently censored by Italy. This quasi-voluntary system, which was introduced under the banner of fighting “child pornography” relies on a secret, unaccountable list of site names. Because of this lack of transparency, and the power of the censorship system, the blacklist is of intense interest.
Secret “child pornography” censorship blacklists in other countries, such as China, Thailand, Australia, Finland and Denmark have all been shown by WikiLeaks to have been corrupted into censoring non-child pornographic content, including political content (all but Denmark). It seems to be a law of human affairs that when such powerful, unaccountable, systems are introduced, they soon stray from their stated purpose.
The majority of sites on the Italian list seem to be unrelated to child pornography. While some do appear to relate to the images of teenagers, the vast majority of sites are related to what appears to be legal young-adult pornography. Some sites are unrelated to any type of pornography.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 30 Jun 2009
After hearing about Nokia-Siemens sale of Internet-monitoring software to Iran, US Senators Schumer and Graham want to bar them from receiving federal contracts. They planned the action after hearing about a joint venture of Nokia Corp. of Finland and Siemens AG of Germany that sold a sophisticated Internet-monitoring system to Iran in 2008. According to Nextgov.com, Schumer and Graham's bill would require the Obama administration to identify foreign companies that export sensitive technology to Iran and ban them from bidding on federal contracts, or renew expiring ones, unless they first stop exports to Iran.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 30 Jun 2009
China will delay the mandatory installation of the controversial "Green Dam-Youth Escort" filtering software on new computers, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said here Tuesday.
The pre-installation was delayed as some computer producers said such massive installation demanded extra time, said the ministry.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 30 Jun 2009
Since 1997 the junta has purchased sophisticated technology from a Singapore-based company to assist in the development of a Cyber Warfare Center in order to accentuate efficacy and surveillance over the Army. Additionally, in May 2004, the junta purchased filtering software from American company Fortinet. ONI, largely as a result of such information technology transfers, has chronicled an increasing level of effectiveness on the part of the Burmese regime in the control of information over recent years.
Burma, in the end, is caught in a vicious cycle. As the junta appears unwilling to improve the life conditions of the population, as one tactic to stay in power, the economy of the country is consequently not industrially and technologically adapted to take maximum advantage of the Internet. Moreover, launching economic development via information technology is not deemed worth the political risk in the battle over the dissemination of information. Severe restrictions on Internet access is thus perceived as one strategy in denying opposition elements a greater foothold in Burmese society.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 30 Jun 2009
Recently, the Canadian envoy to Iran was called in and admonished by Iranian officials for contributing to the destabilitization of the regime because of support for social networking tools, like Twitter and Facebook. The envoy must have scratched his head in puzzlement.
The Iranians' furor was ignited by the work of our company, Psiphon, which is based in Canada and has actively engaged in a campaign to help Iranians bypass their country's filters and exercise basic human rights of access to information and freedom of speech. On average, one Iranian per minute has signed up to our "right-2know" nodes -- customized websites pushed into Iran that contain access to BBC Persian and Radio Farda -- and more than 15,000 have used our service since the crisis began.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 29 Jun 2009
Article 35 of the Political Constitution of Republic of Guatemala expressly recognizes the right to freedom of expression of ideas in the following terms: Ideas can be expressed freely through any medium without prior censorship or authorization. This constitutional right cannot be restricted by any law or governmental decree.
But it seems that Internet Service Providers CLARO, TIGO and MOVISTAR (Telefónica), the most important Internet Service Providers are ignoring the laws, Guatemalan users report blocked access to Web site since Friday afternoon. El Abismo de Tux called customer service and blogged about it. No clear answer from them.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 29 Jun 2009
Iranian protesters appearing in widely disseminated online photos from the ongoing post-election demonstrations in Iran, are now being targeted on a website of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The website is called Gerdab (which means ‘vortex') and belongs to The Information Center of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for Investigating Organized Crime. It shows images of 20 people with red circles drawn around their faces claiming without evidence that they have been involved in creating “chaos” in Tehran.
