Threats to the Open Net: March 25, 2011

Every week, the OpenNet Initiative provides a weekly news roundup (dubbed "Threats to the Open Net") in addition to our usual in-depth blog posts. If you would like to subscribe to the RSS feed for the entire blog or the weekly threats update, you may do so; you are also free to use the feed on your own site, with attribution to the OpenNet Initiative.

* China's recent crackdown on human rights activists online in response to calls for anti-government protests has caused massive disruptions for Gmail users; meanwhile, some citizens suspect the government is censoring their phone conversations using real-time voice recognition.

* The Australian government has launched the first review of its classification scheme in 20 years in an attempt to bring it in line with the digital age. The scheme assigns ratings to films, video games, and publications; free speech activists fear changes to the system could lead to greater Internet censorship.

* A recent attack on Comodo, a company that provides online security certificates for services like Gmail and Skype, is suspected to be the work of Iranian government hackers. The attacks prompted security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, writing for the Tor Project Blog, to call for "new methods for ensuring trust, identity, authenticity, and confidentiality on the internet."

* Sudan has announced that it has a team of "cyber jihadists," which it plans to deploy against anti-government campaigns on Facebook and Twitter.