Censorship
24 May 2013
Russia's top social network blacklisted by regulator Reuters
Russia's top online social network was banned on Friday from distributing content across the country, raising concerns of a clampdown on a forum used by President Vladimir Putin's opponents to organise protests.
21 May 2013
Will 'Digital Ethnic Cleansing' Be Part of the Internet's Future? Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen, and Steve Clemons discuss the political limitations of the Internet The Atlantic
It's easy to assume that a global Internet, with all its promise of scaled communication and education and democratization, will eventually help to foster democracy. But it's also not entirely accurate to assume that. In a conversation with The Atlantic's Steve Clemons yesterday evening, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen -- co-Googlers and co-authors of The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business -- made a point of emphasizing the limitations of technological innovation. Particularly when it comes to geopolitical change.
16 May 2013
Syria Severed from Internet Again Threat Post
For the second time this month, the civil war-torn nation of Syria lost its connection to the Internet this morning before emerging from the Internet blackout several hours later, according to information provided by Arbor Networks.
15 May 2013
The digital revolution? It's all a gift to the power of the state The Guardian
On Monday the US justice department admitted it knew of every phone call made by 100 Associated Press reporters in April and May last year. It had seized the details, undisclosed, from the relevant phone companies. No reason was given. The department said it "valued the freedom of the press", but - that phrase is always followed by but - it had to balance this against the public interest in security.
China tries to rein in microbloggers The Guardian
China has launched a new drive to tame its boisterous microblogging culture by closing influential accounts belonging to writers and intellectuals who have used them to highlight social injustice.
09 May 2013
Syrian internet back after 19-hour blackout BBC News
The internet in Syria appears to have returned after a nationwide blackout knocked the country offline for more than 19 hours.
Internet in Syria goes dark, leaving questions and uncertainty Electronic Frontier Foundation
Earlier today, we learned that Internet traffic between Syria and Western online services had plummeted drastically, indicated that the country's connection to the wider Internet had been shut down. Reports from Renesys and Google confirmed the routes into Syria had been withdrawn, implying either a massive infrastructure cut, or a deliberate silencing of online communication.
Why Did Syria Shut Down the Internet? New Yorker
The World Wide Web became a little less worldwide on Tuesday afternoon. Suddenly, Syria disappeared, at least from the perspectives of Google and Akamai. Nineteen hours later, it appears to have come back on. How was it turned off? Four fibre-optic lines carry Internet traffic in and out of the country. Perhaps, as the government says, the rebels cut them all. Or perhaps four scavengers simultaneously digging for copper wrenched their spades in at the same time. But most likely, President Bashar al-Assad did the deed. The government also flipped the kill switch last fall, and security firms report that the shutdown comes from sophisticated engineering, not coördinated slicing or accidental shovelling.
08 May 2013
Syria cut off from global Internet as civil war rages Reuters
Internet connections between Syria and the outside world were cut off on Tuesday, according to data from Google Inc and other global Internet companies.
07 May 2013
Google Aims To Patent Policy Violation Checker, Potentially Revolutionizing Email Snooping The Guardian
We've all come to rely on spell-checkers that correct misspellings as we type. Now, Google has filed a patent for a tool that seems like an evil-checker: a software system that could prevent people from writing out, in electronic correspondence and documents, phrases that run afoul of policies or laws.
01 May 2013
Support for Online Free Speech Widespread in the Arab World Electronic Frontier Foundation
Just a little more than two years ago, the world witnessed the overthrow of three North African dictators and ensuing protests across much of the Arab world on television and social media, the latter of which was much lauded as a catalyzing tool. But while 2011 was a time of hopefulness and increased openness throughout much of the region, 2012 brought about increased repression, both online and off. From Bahrain, named an "enemy of the Internet" by Reporters Without Borders, to Egypt, the trend is toward censorship, surveillance, and increased regulation.
26 April 2013
Google Sees More Government Requests to Remove Content Than Ever Before The Atlantic
In the latest edition of its Transparency Report, released this morning, Google revealed that the final six months of 2012 saw an increase in government requests to remove content -- often YouTube videos. All told, Google received 2,285 such requests (compared with 1,811 during the first half of 2012) that named a total of 24,179 pieces of content for removal (compared with 18,070 in the preceding period).
23 April 2013
The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution Wall Street Journal
Google's Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, fresh from a visit to North Korea in January, on why the Internet is far from an unalloyed good to the citizens of dictatorships around the world.
19 April 2013
Fears of Russian internet crackdown as investigators search social network HQ The Guardian
The Russian version of Facebook has had its offices searched and its ownership structure shaken amid fears the Kremlin is looking to tighten its grip on the internet.
16 April 2013
After Apple's App Store rejection, French minister wades into debate over apps and net neutrality ZDNet
After Apple expelled French app AppGratis from its store, French minister Fleur Pellerin has expressed concern about the move - and its implications for net neutrality.
06 April 2013
The Great Firewall: Chinese screening of online material from abroad is becoming ever more sophisticated The Economist
On February 9th, Chinese New Year's Eve, Fang Binxing, known in China as the father of the Great Firewall, wished his followers on Sina Weibo a happy Year of the Snake. As always whenever Mr Fang tweets, thousands of fellow microbloggers sent messages along the lines of "get lost". They could not reply directly: Mr Fang gets so much abuse for his role in engineering China's censorship technology that the "comments" function on his microblog page had to be disabled long ago. Nor can users easily find the comments on the 35,000 retweets of his new-year post: Sina has blocked access to those as well.
05 April 2013
China's internet: A giant cage The Economist
The internet was expected to help democratise China. Instead, it has enabled the authoritarian state to get a firmer grip, says Gady Epstein. But for how long?
Internet controls in other countries: China's model for controlling the internet is being adopted elsewhere The Economist
At a United Nations conference on telecommunications governance in Dubai last December representatives of most of the world's countries argued furiously over the way the internet should be managed. The debate established a clear divide over how much control a country should have over its own internet. On one side were America, the European Union and other developed countries that broadly back internet freedom; on the other were China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and a number of other authoritarian states. A significant majority of these seem to favour China's approach to control (or a Russian variant), which involves allowing more access to the internet and reaping the economic benefits, but at the same time monitoring, filtering, censoring and criminalising free speech online.
Shutting down the internet: Turning off the entire internet is a nuclear option best not exercised The Economist
In a crisis, might China flip the "kill switch" on its internet and disconnect its 564m users? It may sound unthinkable, but the idea is not altogether outlandish. The Communist Party has already given it a trial run in an entire province.
04 April 2013
China is losing virtual propaganda war Financial Times
After more than two weeks of sustained attack from China's biggest state media outlets, Apple finally genuflected this week and issued a humble apology for its "perceived" arrogance and disregard for Chinese customers.
01 April 2013
Russians Selectively Blocking Internet New York Times
The Russian government in recent weeks has been making use of a new law that gives it the power to block Internet content that it deems illegal or harmful to children.
Saudi Arabia Warns Internet Messaging Applications to Follow Local Regulations Network World
Saudi Arabia has threatened action against Internet-based communications applications if they do not meet local rules, suggesting that the kingdom is ready for a showdown with some of these providers over local monitoring of their services.
24 March 2013
Google boss Eric Schmidt urges Burma to embrace internet freedom The Guardian
The boss of Google has urged Burma's government to allow private businesses to develop the country's poor telecommunications infrastructure, emphasising the importance of competition and free speech.
20 March 2013
Skype Instant Messaging in China is Censored, Spied Upon Network World
The Chinese version of Skype contains spyware that searches for blacklisted words and phrases, blocks instant messages that contain them, copies them to servers and captures the rest of IM chats that have been flagged in this way, according to researchers.
14 March 2013
Researchers Find 25 Countries Using Surveillance Software New York Times
Last May, two security researchers volunteered to look at a few suspicious e-mails sent to some Bahraini activists. Almost one year later, the two have uncovered evidence that some 25 governments, many with questionable records on human rights, may be using off-the-shelf surveillance software to spy on their own citizens.
