China has tightened control on online information concerning a massive riot in southern China that heightened security concerns just 39 days before the start of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Last weekend, about 30,000 angry residents in Weng'an County in Guizhou province smashed government buildings and torched several police cars to protest against the alleged cover-up of a girl’s death. Although the Wall Street Journal reports on netizens’ clever uses of technology to circulate information on the incident, the gears of the government’s information control machinery appear to be churning in all the usual ways.

Last weekend, only one piece of news was released by the official Xinhua News Agency, describing those protesters as “some people who did not know about the exact context of what had happened” and failing to discuss any investigation of teenage girl’s death. In contrast to the silence of state-run media, numerous photos and video clips quickly appeared on various online forums and personal blogs, cataloguing thousands of people surrounding a police headquarters, riot police guarding the burning shell of the building, and charred overturned police vehicles. Unconfirmed and conflicting stories about the girl’s death were also circulated on the Internet on last Saturday, and netizens demanding justice were very angry at the government cover-up of information. The following is a screenshot of one online forum in China at 17:03 on June 29. Among 20 posts in that page, 15 are related to the Weng’an riot.

However, on Monday, many if not most postings concerning this incident had been deleted from online forums and blog entries--only a few references could be still found on Monday. Many online forums and blog services appear to have listed “Weng’an” as a sensitive news keyword and warn users not to discuss the Weng’an riot. On Monday, June 30, an ONI researcher from inside China tested five popular blog websites by posting a paragraph from Hong Kong Ming Pao’s news coverage containing with word “Weng’an.” Tianya and Kaidi did not allow him to post a paragraph from, and the rest ( Blogbus , Blogcn , and Mop) deleted the post within 24 hours. The error message read: “This post contains sensitive words, please inspect!”

Although hundreds of video clips appear on YouTube, none appear on two of biggest China’s domestic video-sharing websites, Tudou.com and Uume.com. ONI researchers from Beijing and Nanjing have not found any video clips concerning the Guizhou riot on these two websites since Saturday. Although Chinese Internet users still can access YouTube, they cannot access to certain video clips about the Weng’an incident (e.g. 1, 2, 3) on YouTube. Information relating to the incident appears to have been made a keyword that triggers a reset connection-- once our ONI researcher searched for “Weng’an” on YouTube, his connection to YouTube would be severed for several minutes and then users would receive the following error message reading “This page cannot be displayed.”

The Chinese government also appears to have censored search results about “Weng’an” on Baidu, the most popular search engine in China. When “Weng’an” is entered as a search term, Baidu returns results that include mainly news from state-run media. Google.cn showed similar results. Information sources from dissenting or foreign websites that were either blocked or did not appear on Baidu or Google.cn did appear in search results for Google.com.

But when users entered other words, such as “Weng’an riot”, they could receive some uncensored results from online forums or personal blogs, however, most of these have already been deleted and cannot be accessed successfully.

Since Monday, the government and state-run media have increasingly reported more news and governments’ announcements regarding Weng’an riot on Chinese news websites every day, but most news websites are still not allowing Internet users to leave comments.

On Monday, China responded by launching a nationwide campaign to defuse protest ahead of the Olympics. According to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao paper, President Hu Jintao required the local government in Guizhou to release information in a timely manner to lead the public opinion instead of blocking information. But so far, there are still few signs of relaxed information control in Chinese cyberspace over this incident.

ONI has obtained a copy of regulations for the operation of cybercafes in Burma. Since March 2006, the Burmese government has been 'encouraging' the growing number of cybercafes to become licensed as public access centers (PACs) under the management of Myanmar Info-Tech, a state-owned company. The regulations mandate that screenshots be taken every 5 minutes and user data be submitted routinely to Myanmar Info-Tech, and even require that computer monitors be placed for maximum public viewing.

Below is an unofficial translation. The original version in Burmese is available here.

Public Access Center Regulations by Myanmar Info-Tech
=================================
1) All cyber cafe users must supply his/her name, Identity card or (Passport Number), address, and phone number to the cybercafe. Cyber cafe owners must record their identities.
2) Internet Usage must be recorded in Date/Time/Screen Shot/URLs format and send it to Myanmar Info-Tech via CD-Rom every 2 weeks.
3) Owners and operators of cybercafes should keep backup logs of Internet usage.
4) Screenshots must be taken every 5 minutes.
5) Monitors must be faced to side where they can be easily viewed publicly.
6) Cybercafes must post a sign stating that "Only subscribers of MPT's official email and Mail4U can use email. Other email use is not allowed."
7) Cybercafes must post a sign stating that "Tunneling Website/Software are prohibited"
8) Cybercafes must post a sign stating that "Cyber Crimes (Hacking, Virus Distribution, Port scanning and etc.) and acts against Myanmar culture are prohibited"
9) No access of political web sites is allowed.
10) Do not host or engage in gambling activities in PACs (Public Access Centers)
11) Sale of alcohol and drugs is prohibited.
12) Use of speakers is not allowed. Must use headphones.
13) Do not allow use of disk drives, CD drives or USB Port in PACs.
14) If a user wants to download or copy files from the Internet, he/she must register in logbook.
15) Do not remain open after 11pm.
16) Make fire prevention arrangements.
17) If someone disobey the PAC regulations, owners must promptly inform Myanmar Info-Tech.
18) Owners and operators must obey the Wide Area Network law and related policies for ICT use (3/2003).
19) Owners and operators must obey Myanmar Info-Tech's rules and regulations that are announced as needed.

Free wireless broadband has been a goal of academics, activists, and politicians for years, and M2Z, a new start-up led by former FCC official John Muleta might give it to them. Unfortunately, it will not be the broadband they’ve been looking for, because the FCC has proposed that M2Z “filter[] or block[] images and text that constitute obscenity or pornography.”

Now, Wendy Seltzer and ONI’s Sally Walkerman have already written some great posts about how this sort of restriction would hurt innovation and free speech. This post focuses on the potential legality of such regulation.

The US government has tried once already to prevent minors from finding pornography online: it was the Communications Decency Act of 1996, and key portions of it were ruled unconstitutional a year later in Reno v. ACLU. The reasons the court overturned those provisions are highly relevant to the proposal the FCC is making today.

Television and radio, the court observed, have been regulated by the government since their inception. Additionally, they are inherently scarce media: there just isn’t enough spectrum to present every possible view. And relatedly, they are traditionally invasive media: if a television is on in a public room, it’s hard not to pay attention. For these three reasons the court believed itself justified in regulating certain content on TV and radio.

Justice Stevens, writing for the majority in Reno, observed that none of these conditions exist for the Internet. There is no substantial history of regulating cyberspace, nor is its content scarce, nor is it an inherently invasive medium: computers in public places are easily ignored.

Furthermore, with TV or radio it is comparatively easy to control content at its creation: NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox are all headquartered in the United States. If they broadcast pornography they can be sued, or if necessary, their executives can be arrested. But no such legal options exist online. It is virtually impossible to control content from the source of creation – there are too many people creating content in too many different places to effectively regulate them all.

And so, the court ruled, the government could not regulate pornographic content online for the purpose of protecting children. Would this ruling apply to the FCC’s proposed standards for M2Z? It’s an interesting question. While M2Z’s network like television or radio would be carried over the airwaves, its content would not be scarce or invasive in the way radio and television content is. And while the wireless network would be free, making it easier for children to find Internet access outside the home, it would remain easier to censor at the end-user, not the content-creation level. Of course, all this is just speculation – these proposed rules may not even be adopted. But you can contribute to the debate by filing a comment with the FCC here (the proceeding number is 07-195)

A group of people gathered in the northwest mountains of Turkey last week – and it wasn’t to cheer on the national football team in the Euro 2008 Cup.

The Eurasia Daily Monitor reports that a group of lawyers, academics, and Internet professionals gathered in Abant, Turkey on June 18 and 19 to discuss the country’s growing Internet censorship. These experts aimed to “define the border between societal values and individual freedoms,” Today’s Zaman details. The two-day workshop, sponsored by the Ankar Bar Association and turk.internet.com, convened in an attempt to find solutions for the disturbing frequency by which the Turkish government has been blocking Web sites, especially in the last year. So far, YouTube and several blogs - reportedly including the CNN Political Ticker - were blocked.

Turkey’s censorship policies have been coming under fire since the government adopted Internet Publication Law No. 5651 in 2007, which includes stricter guidelines for what is deemed appropriate online content. The most noteworthy of these stipulations is one which has remained a constant feature of the country’s legislation since 1951: the prohibition of denigrating the memory of the Republic of Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – a crime which has landed several journalists in prison over the years.

Sure, there are many other governments which censor online content, and an even greater number that target printed materials criticizing government officials or celebrated religious or cultural figures. Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code – which criminalizes dissenting opinions of “Turkishness” or the “Republic” - makes it no different from such countries. What does make it different, however, is its geopolitical position. Not only is it a state which some political theorists would call a “democracy in transition,” but it seems to be perpetually straddled both geographically and politically between several divergent forces: East and West, Religious and Secular, and now, it hinges on a delicate balance between having a “mostly free and open internet” and one which extensively “filters the content that their citizens see” – as John Palfrey noted in February.

The fact remains, however, that the Turkish government has been censoring its citizens for a long time – especially in the arts or regarding discussions of the Armenian Genocide – using Ataturk’s founding philosophy of “one nation, one language, one history, one culture” as a premise for extreme censorship practices both through legislative and judicial acts (acts which, by the way, could harm its chances of joining the EU.) Yet, whether the challenge Turkey faces is really about “societal values and individual freedoms,” or the tension between its religious roots and secular ambitions, meetings such as the one in Abant are crucial building blocks in affecting which way the country will lean regarding Internet filtering.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - the organization that licenses domains like .com and .edu - meets in Paris this week to discuss two proposals which could change the shape of the Internet. The first would create a new class of non-latin alphabet domains - Cyrillic and Chinese, for example - while the second would create a potentially infinite number of 'generic' domains - .museum, for example, or .africa. (See [here] for a post on the second proposal.) The first proposal includes potential censorship concerns, which are discussed below.

The new proposal considers adding non-latin country names - the Chinese character translation of .cn, for example, and the Cyrillic translation of .ru - and if approved would cede management of those domains to their countries' respective governments. The Chinese government already operates .cn and the Russian government operates .ru, and both countries have repeatedly censored material within these domains. Last year Russia censored the popular website Lenta.ru for criticizing Uzbek elections, and this year Russian lawmakers proposed censoring any online material the government deemed "extremist". China has a long history of censoring websites related to the Falun Gong and Tiananmen Square, and continues to censor politically sensitive sites in the run-up to the Olympic games.

In the face of ongoing censorship, ICANN could do two things to aid free speech in these countries. First, it could require an 'open access' provision for these new non-latin domains. That is, it could require that any person who wanted to buy a specific site within the Cyrillic or Chinese domains (www.falungong.cn, for example) could do so, regardless of his or her politics. Second, ICANN could relax registration requirements for purchasing new domain names. For example, it could strike its own requirements that buyers give their addresses or contact information, or it could mandate people be allowed to purchase domain names under pseudonyms (provided, or course, that the buyers actually paid their bills). In this way governments would have a much harder time controlling end-user content.

The current proposal for non-latin domains does neither of these things. After all, ICANN considers itself a technical body, not a political one. And even if ICANN were to impose these sorts of requirements, a government could try to create its own top-level domains, and provide its own registry services, ostensibly making a separate Internet. Yet even if ICANN's influence on the Chinese (or any) government is small, it remains the best-placed organization to make just such a demand for free speech.

You can track the debate in Paris here and here; a decision on the non-Latin domains is expected this week.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission released a report , addressing their efforts to build broadband access. So far, recent efforts have centered around auctioning off portions of the wireless spectrum, and some with the requirement that the spectrum be used to offer free wireless connectivity. Don't get too excited yet. Free (as in you don't pay for it) wouldn't quite be free. Provisions to require companies offering free wireless to block pornography - "content harmful to minors". This could require the blocking of many hard-to-monitor uses of the Net, such as encrypted messaging and VOIP.

Wendy Seltzer points out:

To block naked pictures among the 1s and 0s of Internet data, you need first to know that a given 11010110 is part of a picture, not a voice conversation or text document. So to have any hope of filtering effectively, you have to constrain network traffic to protocols you know, and know how to filter. Web browsing OK, peer-to-peer browsing out. You’d have to block anything you didn’t understand: new protocols, encrypted traffic, even texts in other languages. (The kids might learn French to read “L’Histoire d’O,” quelle horreur!) “Should any commercially-available network filters installed not be capable of reviewing certain types of communications, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, the licensee may use other means, such as limiting access to those types of communications as part of the AWS-3 free broadband service, to ensure that inappropriate content … not be accessible as part of the service.”

We often write about how ineffective filtering is at blocking access to content, and how difficult it is to be accurate -- blocking only what is unlawful, no more, no less. This case brings up several disturbing points. First, pornography (with the exception of child pornography) is not illegal in the United States. It is only illegal to provide it to minors. Internet service providers cannot determine who is a minor and who is not, creating a situation of blatant overblocking for any user over the age of 18 (even if they get the block list right in the first place). Second, to block access to technologies, simply because they could carry porn is not even close to an option under the first amendment. It may, instead, be up to all of us to come up with better ways to carry out age verification and the like. The FCC is stretching uncomfortably into content control territory, from which precedent and common sense advise staying away.

See also Scott Bradner, David Weinberger, and Persephone Miel

After weeks of tumultuous protests inspired largely by South Korea’s young netizens, this country, one of the most wired and technology savvy in the world, is considering new ways to monitor the Internet.

In April, South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak’s decision to resume US beef imports quickly ignited a national web protests among young people and led to widespread fears of mad cow disease. It fast became a month-long series of street demonstrations that have been difficult for Lee’s government to cope with. In past two months, Lee’s fledgling administration was beleaguered by a spate of unconfirmed cyberspace rumors and his public approval ratings plunged below 20 percent.

Last week, President Lee called for the Internet to “be a space of trust”, and warned that “the spread of false and incorrect information through the Internet and spam email is threatening the people’s rational thinking and mutual trust.” But he did not mention the protests against him.

Although President Lee ruled out any intention to censor cyberspace, the Korea Communications Commission said it would consider strengthening its identity verification system, introduced last year, to curb cyber bullying. For example, users may be required to verify their identity, or be asked to register nickname, when they post comments or participate in online discussion. And portal operators must disclose identities of cyber attackers if victims want to sue for libel or infringement of privacy.

Admittedly, netizens are often inspired to protest by misleading information in cyberspace and some web activities are described as akin to cyber terrorism. It is necessary to discourage cyber bulling and online malicious messages. However, due to the unclear definition of cyber bullying, attacks, and malicious online messages, South Korea’s new regulations may suppress legitimate online speech and violate the freedom of speech. Even if the government has the legitimate rights to deal with rumors, how do we ensure these regulations rights will not be abused? In fact, in order to restrict cyber bullying or other irrational online behaviors, the best way may be self-regulation, a set of norms for cyber behavior. Tim O’Reilly, one of the web’s most influential thinkers, noted that “I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behavior, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of [legal/government] regulation it would come through self-regulation.”

On March 25, Indonesian government ratified Undang-undang Informasi dan Transaksi Elektronic (ITE) which, in short, means Internet Law. The law regulates everything online under Indonesian government's territory effective April 1. Some highlights of the statute:

Article 10: government has the right to give Certificate of Credibility to Online Businesses
Article 11: Giving electronic signature a legal standing
Article 15-22 : regulate online transaction security
Article 25: protection for intellectual property
Article 26: regulates privacy
Article 27: Prohibit contents that is indecent, gambling related, defamation, extortion, and threat
Article 28: Prohibit contents that invokes hate based on lies, ethnic, religion, race, and affiliation.
Article 31: Prohibiting the transmission of content that is not one's own.
Article 45: Punishment for this statute ranges from 6 years to 12 years in prison or Rp 1 billion – Rp 12 billion and any additional charges.

The ratification of the Internet Law ignited uproar from Indonesian bloggers who feel that the Internet law, especially Article 27, 28, and 31, threatens freedom of expression guaranteed by the original 1945 constitution.

Previously, Indonesian government only losely controlled the Internet. With the rise of cybercafes in cities, Internet usage in Indonesia has been increasing dramatically. In a country where the press is controlled tightly by various telecommunication laws [1,2,3], many Indonesian journalists had turned to the Internet to free their voices. How the Internet law will be implemented, and whether extensive filtering will be put in place, is unclear. The law itself seems to have come from a push from the Cyber Crime Direktorat Ekonomi Khusus Badan Reserse dan Kriminal (Bareskrim), the police cyber crime division for another cybercrime law . Under the new law, many critical journalism pieces could be challenged under articles 26, 27, 28, or 31 and thus would be unpublishable online as well as in print.

If used improperly, this new law will, again, silence Indonesian journalism.

(Disclaimer: All links are in Bahasa)

Western software companies continue to make key decisions about what is acceptable speech in numerous countries around the world by compiling the lists of web sites that fall into potentially undesirable categories, such as provocative content and hate speech.

Livejournal.com, a free service for journaling and blogging, was blocked in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this week, apparently because it was categorized as a dating site in the database of the filtering software Secure Computing. The UAE uses SmartFilter, a product of Secure Computing, to block access to various content categories including dating, porn, sex, and gambling.

We checked livejournal.com and three other URLs currently blocked in the UAE for current categorization in the SmartFilter database and found that all were categorized as “dating” sites, even though many will argue against this categorization.

Western companies sell to ISPs not only filtering software, but also decisions on speech. This blocking highlights serious issues surrounding coverage, quality, accuracy and inaccuracy of Web filtering. Secure Computing, used by ISPs in various countries in the Middle East, has a database of 20 million blockable Web sites in over 91 categories. So when ISPs purchase SmartFitlter, they also buy 20 million decisions and 91 potential inaccurate categorizations.

It is up to the ISPs to make corrections and exceptions in either direction. Web sites such as friendster.com and hi5.com were unblocked in the UAE a few weeks ago, even though they are still categorized as dating Web sites by SmartFilter. These processes, however, are not always clear or easy to figure out, and site owners may not be easily able to appeal the blocking of their site.

“It is Google's policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages.”1

This is Google’s transparency pledge. Similarly, MSN (Microsot's search engine) and Yahoo pledge their commitments to transparency and global freedom of access to information publicly. However, they're also struggling with the (harsh) reality of operating in certain foreign countries. In the case of China, Citizen’s lab just finished a study on the censorship practices of popular search engines. The report concludes, “search engine companies maintain an overall low level of transparency regarding their censorship practices and … that independent monitoring is required to evaluate their compliance with public pledges regarding commitments to transparency and human rights.” What is even more disturbing is that in August of 2006, Human Rights Watch published a report on corporate complicity with Chinese censorship, and the Citizen Lab’s finding confirms that no substantial move has been made on the part of the involved corporations to rectify the situation. One may wonder why the corporate world has not taken any promising, proper initiatives in this regard. In an era where corporations are not merely evaluated in terms of their annual profits but also in their environmental conscientious and loyalty to shareholders, we need to also demand social responsibility.

It is interesting to note that censoring software such as Policenet, Watchdog Router (both used in China), Smartfilter (used in Saudi Arabia and Tunisia) and Fortinet (used in Burma) are developed not inside totalitarian counties but rather in North American companies(2,3). Nart Villeneuve argues that in the case of Google (that censors considerably less than the other engines), the local, authorized content are give a higher weight in the ranking algorithm and therefore the probability of a censored site being selected and presented is substantially smaller. In the case of Yahoo, he notes that, “while yahoo.com tends to not rank ‘authorized’ content as highly as google.com, the results from yahoo.cn heavily favor ‘authorized’ content.” One can argue that for search engine companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft present in China, obligatory licensing and the threat of shutdown in case of noncompliance is an imperative incentive for filtering the search result.(4)

Although censored sites form a small portion of the net, these sites are paramount to the dispersion of alternative (at times opposing) ideologies, freedom of expression and growth of democracy. Furthermore, only through public pressure, creation of a code of conduct (5,6) for operating in censored environments and independent monitoring of corporate compliance with their public pledges can we shed some light on this situation.