Censorship
14 March 2008
Virtual demos over net censorship BBC
Thousands of people are taking part in "virtual protests" against countries accused of censoring the internet. For its first Online Free Expression Day, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has created virtual versions of nine public spaces.
08 March 2008
Pentagon bans Google from mapping military bases The Guardian
The Pentagon has banned Google's mapping teams from making detailed street-level video maps of US military bases after images of one camp's internal layout ended up on the internet.
07 March 2008
Seeking Tighter Censorship, Repressive States Target Web 2.0 Apps Wired
It's not the governments who censor keywords that worries Ethan Zuckerman, whose job it is to help dissidents around the world. He fears that governments will simply decide to go after the Web 2.0 tools that activists are using to publish.
Cyber-Rebels in Cuba Defy State's Limits New York Times
A growing underground network of young people armed with computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress.
An op-ed by Professors John Palfrey and Jonathan Zittrain: Choices for Turkey in the digital age Harvard Law School
The core boon and bane of the combined Internet and personal computer is its "generativity." Generativity means the ability for people all over the world -- people without particular credentials or wealth or connections -- to use and then share the power of technology for a variety of ends. Many of these uses have been unanticipated or, if anticipated, would never have been thought to be valuable at first. When the Internet was first created, no one would have imagined that the world's largest encyclopedia could be written entirely by amateurs, and yet we have Wikipedia. ... In Turkey, the Internet has been largely free from government controls. Free expression and innovation have found homes online, in ways that benefit culture and the economy. But there are signs that this freedom may be nearing its end, just as the benefits to be reaped are growing. When the state chooses to ban entire services for the many because of the acts of the few, the threat to innovation and creativity is high. Those states that have erected extensive censorship and surveillance regimes online have found them hard to implement with any degree of accuracy and fairness.
05 March 2008
Iran May Block Internet on Election Day New York Times
Iran's government might block private access to the Internet on its election day, March 14, two Iranian news outlets reported Monday. But the two accounts appeared to differ on the rationale.
04 March 2008
Why we should keep an eye on those who are watching us The Guardian
Writing in The Guardian, Peter Tatchell says, "Like millions of other viewers, I was gripped last night by the latest plot twists in BBC1's thriller series The Last Enemy, which depicts the dystopian future of a complete surveillance society, where everyone is data-based, ID-carded and CCTV-monitored 24/7. It is Big Brother writ-large, with all-pervasive remote sensors, facial recognition software, iris scans, vehicle tracking and eavesdropping."
French Police extends the Internet blacklist EDRI-gram
French Internal Affairs Minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, announced on 14 February 2008 new measures to fight against cybercrime, including extending the websites blacklist and pushing for computer online investigations, without the permission of the country of the hosting company.
01 March 2008
In Pakistan vs. YouTube, it's not all about technology CNet
The flap earlier this week in which Pakistan Telecom knocked YouTube.com off the Internet for two hours seems almost inexplicable. It's not like when a court in Turkey blocked access to YouTube from within the country, or when China restricts Western news sites.
27 February 2008
Finnish scandal unmasks censorship tactics Internet Governance blog
For some time it has been known that law enforcement authorities in Norway and Finland have prepared lists of alleged child pornography web sites, and demanded that local Internet service providers block access to them. This model of blocking access was avidly picked up by Internet law enforcement authorities in other countries, including the Netherlands, where pressure has been placed on ISPs to block these sites or risk being publicly smeared as aiding and abetting child abuse.
26 February 2008
YouTube outage blamed on Pakistan BBC
Pakistan's attempts to block access to YouTube have been blamed for a near global blackout of the site on Sunday. Google, the owner of YouTube, blamed the outage on "erroneous internet protocols", sourced in Pakistan.
25 February 2008
Pakistan blocks YouTube website BBC
Pakistan has blocked access to the popular YouTube website because of content deemed offensive to Islam. Its telecommunications authority ordered internet service providers to block the site until further notice.
23 February 2008
China asks Web sites to eradicate porn and violence Reuters
China has called on domestic Web sites to sign a voluntary pact governing online video and audio content, saying they should exercise self-censorship to ensure a "healthy and orderly" cyberspace.
22 February 2008
Stifling Online Speech New York Times
Wikileaks claims to have posted more than a million corporate and government documents that, it says, expose wrongdoing. It has posted, among other things, a 2003 operations manual from the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, military prison. Julius Baer Bank and Trust, a Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank, sued Wikileaks charging that it had illegally posted documents stolen by a former employee. The site said the documents "allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures" for money laundering, tax evasion and other misdeeds.
21 February 2008
Bill Gates says Internet censorship won't work ComputerWorld
Efforts by countries like China to restrict the exchange of information on the Internet are ultimately doomed to failure, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told an audience of Stanford University students Tuesday. "I don't see any risk in the world at large that someone will restrict free content flow on the Internet," he said. "You cannot control the Internet."
20 February 2008
Finland censors anti-censorship site The Register
Finnish police are blocking more than 1,000 legal websites, including one belonging to a well-known internet activist, under a secretive system designed to prevent access to foreign sites that contain child pornography, according to a group that advocates for individual rights online.
us: Court puts kybosh on telltale site The Age
A controversial website providing a safe haven for whistleblowers seeking to upload confidential documents has been forced offline by a US court. The Swiss bank Julius Baer sought an injunction against the Wikileaks site after it published documents purportedly showing shady offshore activities - including money laundering and tax evasion - allegedly supported by the bank in the Cayman Islands.
18 February 2008
Wikipedia defies 180,000 demands to remove images of the Prophet The Observer
Wikipedia is refusing to remove medieval artistic depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, despite being flooded with complaints from Muslims demanding the images be deleted. More than 180,000 worldwide have joined an online protest claiming the images, shown on European-language pages and taken from Persian and Ottoman miniatures dating from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, are offensive to Islam, which prohibits any representation of Muhammad.
17 February 2008
In the new China, sex can still be the stuff of scandal The Guardian
An argument is raging in China over images that have been released on the internet showing Edison Chen, one of Hong Kong's most famous celebrities, engaging in sexual activities with eight of the territory's top actresses and singers. Hong Kong police have arrested at least eight people in relation to the images, illegally copied from Chen's laptop. The controversy has surrounded the scale of the crackdown, and the wider question of privacy and censorship on the internet and the media at large.
13 February 2008
China launches new internet purge The Guardian
China has started another official crackdown on online games, pornography and internet cafes as part of a campaign against juvenile crime, a state news agency said today.
06 February 2008
China tightens rules on online video sector Financial Times
China has banned privately owned companies from entering the country's fast-growing online video sector but will allow existing providers to continue to operate as long as they carefully monitor footage posted on their websites.
05 February 2008
Great Firewall of China Faces Online Rebels New York Times
... But growing numbers of others are becoming increasingly resentful of restrictions on a wide range of Web sites, including Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace (sometimes), Blogspot and many other sites that the public sees as sources of harmless diversion or information. The mounting resentment has inspired a wave of increasingly determined social resistance of a kind that is uncommon in China. This resistance is taking many forms, from lawsuits by Internet users against government-owned service providers, claiming that the blocking of sites is illegal, to a growing network of software writers who develop code aimed at overcoming the restrictions. An Internet-based word-of-mouth campaign has taken shape, in which bloggers and Web page owners post articles to spread awareness of the Great Firewall, or share links to programs that will help evade it.
Hackers declare war on Scientologists amid claims of heavy-handed Cruise control The Guardian
On one side is the Church of Scientology, freshly boosted by a $10m donation from the actor Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson. On the other is what the self-styled church has dismissed as a "pathetic" collection of "computer geeks": a maverick band of hackers who have launched an online war against the organisation.
03 February 2008
Lifeline for Pervez: Afghan Senate withdraws demand for death sentence The Independent
In a dramatic volte-face, the Afghan Senate has withdrawn its confirmation of a death sentence on Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student convicted of blasphemy for downloading a report on women's rights from the internet.
02 February 2008
Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights The Independent
A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan - not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai.
