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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 23 Jun 2009
After seeing Swedish voters send the Pirate Party to the European Parliament, the German branch of the group has now gotten a seat in the lower house of that nation's parliament, the Bundestag. But the seat didn't come about through an electoral triumph; instead a member of the Social Democrats, Jörg Trauss, changed allegiances, claiming his decision was driven by his former party's support for a mandatory Internet filtering scheme. But the situation is complicated by the fact that the filtering would target child porn, and Trauss is under investigation for possession of that material (he claims it was for investigative purposes).
The legislation in question would implement a scheme that's somewhat similar to the one under consideration in Australia. The system would rely on a blacklist of sites, maintained by the German Federal police force, the Bundeskriminalamt. Access to blacklisted sites would trigger the ISP to send the user to a warning page, indicating that the site contains illegal child porn. Users will, apparently, still have the option of clicking through.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 22 Jun 2009
Certainly, a powerful new force is developing here. Citizens who once had little public voice are using cheap Web tools to tell the world about the drama that has unfolded since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of Iran's disputed election. The government succeeded last week in exerting control over Internet use and text-messaging, but Twitter has proven nearly impossible to block. The most common search topic on Twitter for days has been "#iranelection" -- the "hashtag" for discussions on Iran -- and global media outlets are relying on information and images disseminated via Twitter feeds.
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Yet for all their promise, there are sharp limits on what Twitter and other Web tools such as Facebook and blogs can do for citizens in authoritarian societies. The 140 characters allowed in a tweet are not the end of politics as we know it -- and at times can even play into the hands of hard-line regimes. No amount of Twittering will force Iran's leaders to change course, as supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made clear Friday with his rebuke of the protesters, reportedly followed by the security forces' use of tear gas, batons, water cannons and gunfire to break up demonstrations yesterday. In Iran, as elsewhere, if true revolution is coming, it must happen offline.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 22 Jun 2009
The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale.
Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 22 Jun 2009
The US has complained officially to China over its strict new internet censorship rules as tension builds over an issue causing consternation among international technology companies and Chinese internet users.
The development is a rare direct intervention by the US over internet freedom, which has steadily risen in importance as an issue between the two countries in recent years. US technology companies see it as a back-door way of keeping them out of the Chinese market.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 18 Jun 2009
The city of Beijing is planning to hire thousands of internet censors in a fresh sign of the authorities’ attempts to tighten their grip on cyberspace.
The city will seek to employ at least 10,000 “internet volunteers” before the end of this year to monitor “harmful” websites and content, said an official at the municipal authority’s information office.
Chinese local governments and Communist party branches often pay web commentators to influence online opinion. But it is unusual for officials to admit the practice and the big recruitment drive gives a rare view of the resources China uses to try to control the internet.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 18 Jun 2009
Popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay said Wednesday it has helped launch an Internet network in support of Iranian election critics, allowing users to dodge the regime's censorship rules by surfing anonymously.
The Pirate Bay, whose operators were convicted in April of helping others commit copyright violations, temporarily changed its logo to "The Persian Bay" early Wednesday with a link to a protest forum.
The Web site, iran.whyweprotest.net, says it allows "a secure and reliable way of communication for Iranians and friends" and also directs users to an anonymity system, which can be used to hide their Internet locations.
"Even if a ballot is silenced, the voice behind it cannot be," the site said.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 18 Jun 2009
Facebook is facing a difficult future as it tries to exploit user data to turn a profit - European regulators are considering sweeping reform of data regulations to prevent social networks from over-exploiting the private data of their users.
Changes would extend data protection rules to third party application developers which use social networking profile data to function. They would also extend European data protection rules to firms operating in Europe - not just those based in Europe.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 18 Jun 2009
The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.
The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 17 Jun 2009
The Obama administration took the unusual step of asking Twitter to delay a planned maintenance outage because of the social blogging site's use as a communications tool by Iranians following their disputed election, a senior official said Tuesday.
The request highlighted the administration's Web-savvy ways and the power of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook in organizing protests over the election results in the face of a ban by Iranian authorities on other media.
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By: Rebekah Heacock
Date: 17 Jun 2009
Germany is on the verge of censoring its Internet: The government – a grand coalition between the German social democrats and conservative party – seems united in its decision: On Thursday the parliament is to vote on the erection of an internet censorship architecture.
The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and lead the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government.
