Threats to the Open Net: October 15, 2011

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  • The Android Market and the Android Gmail app are the latest victims of Chinese government's censorship. Both have been blocked for the past several days, and now join Google Plus as some of several Google services to be blocked in the country.
  • Dixie Hawtin recently wrote about the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition's development of the Charter that details standardized human rights on the Internet. In her post for Global Voices, she argues that instead of further refining the Charter, the emphasis now should be on implementing these measures for a more open Internet.
  • The Wall Street Journal reported about the U.S. government's request for the account information of a Wikileaks volunteer. Officials obtained court orders that demanded Google and another small ISP to hand over 28-year-old Jacob Appelbaum's account, including emails of people he had been corresponding with.
  • On Monday, hacker group Anonymous formed plans to perform a DDoS attack on the New York Stock Exchange website, which slowed down considerably twice that afternoon. The attack did not affect trades but slowed down access to the homepage. Keynote Systems, an Internet monitoring firm in San Mateo that reported on the attack, said that the attack was not well organized due to the group's decentralized operations.