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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 17 May 2010
WASHINGTON — The United States and China braced for a second day of human rights talks Friday after a two-day hiatus, with a feud brewing over US support for efforts to crack through China's Internet firewall.
Senior officials on Thursday opened the two-day talks, which offer President Barack Obama's administration a chance to show it also cares about human rights as it seeks a wide-ranging partnership with China on issues ranging from the economy to North Korea's nuclear program.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said the United States will raise the "rule of law, religious freedom, freedom of expression, labor rights and other human rights issues of concern."
"We are fully committed to promoting human rights everywhere, including China, and look forward to candid and in-depth discussions," he said.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 17 May 2010
A survey commissioned by groups opposed to the Federal Goverment’s internet filter project has found that parents in marginal electoral seats are less likely to support the proposal, the more detailed information they are given about it — although they strongly supported the filter idea overall.
The survey was conducted in January 2010 by GA Research on behalf of the Safer Internet Group, which is made up of the Australian Library and Information Association, Google, the Internet Industry Association, the Systems Administrators Guild of Australia, Yahoo!7 and the Australian Council of State School Organisations.
The full report has not been released by GA Research. However, in a statement issued this week, the company said it surveyed 1,018 parents in “key marginal seats” in Sydney and Brisbane.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 29 Apr 2010
Faced with escalating attacks by internet police, bloggers in China are playing a cat and mouse game to avoid detection.
They invent code words and create multiple accounts with pseudo names to escape censors.
It's a dangerous game, with Chinese security forces controlling email and scanning internet services for 1,083 filtered words that include the names of dissidents.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 29 Apr 2010
Last week, Google published its first set of global government request statistics, showing how many demands it receives to remove content from its servers or hand over private information on its users. Transparency by Internet companies about how much information they are compelled to remove or release helps us understand how online journalism worldwide may be affected by state actions. Although Google acknowledges its initial figures are “imperfect,” they are an important first step, not least because they might encourage other companies to provide the same figures.
But what can we learn from the appearance of certain countries in Google’s tables? In particular, what of Brazil, which currently tops both data request and content removal charts for the sheer number of requests? Are Brazilian online journalists, their sources, and the availability of their work at greater risk of censorship and exposure than elsewhere in the world?
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 29 Apr 2010
Analyzing the quarrel between Google and China raises questions of how the Web helps an oppressed country develop democracy, according to a Massachusetts Institute of Technology panel discussion.
"The search engine has become an important tool to help the central government become more transparent," said panelist Xiaojian Zhao, a Chinese journalist studying at MIT on a fellowship, during the discussion Wednesday. "The search engine will aid Chinese democracy."
Yasheng Huang, China program professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, agreed, but went a step further, saying that the Internet has fostered freedom and transparency in China more than the combination of foreign aid, the rise of the middle class and other economic growth factors. "Google leaving China undermines that process," he said.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 29 Apr 2010
Australia has shelved its internet filtering legislation until after the country’s next general election, scheduled to be held in a year’s time, or possibly sooner.
The initiative was controversial from the start, with many organisations expressing opposition.
The aim of the proposed legislation was to force ISPs to disallow access to illegal material such as child pornography.
The office of Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced today that the proposal would proceed no further until the next election.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 23 Apr 2010
We’re sure their heart is in the right place but a new ISP has given us a real laugh today by launching a movie-style certification system for websites.
UK-based Tibboh proudly states that it “protects your family with cinema style ratings for the internet developed with the BBFC. Providing all the benefits of the internet whilst minimising the risk for your children.”
The BBFC is the British Board of Film Classification, the body that decides whether a film can only be watched by over 18s, over 15s etc. With Tibboh, websites are given the same certificates as movies, so children can be blocked from accessing websites that the ISP deems unsuitable for their age.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 23 Apr 2010
What do Australia, Brazil India, Vietnam, the United States and Britain have in common? This week, Google named each of these nations among the list of countries that most often contact it with requests for content removal and user data. Google's disclosure is a bold step towards quantifying this trend. Whether it leads to greater protection of user privacy and free expression on the Internet will depend on the policies that guide the companies' responses to these government requests. But for now this move should prompt other companies to consider how to be more transparent about the censorship restrictions they face.
Google's decision to release this information reveals with greater granularity what internet service providers have been saying for years - that governments are increasingly demanding censorship of Internet content and information about users.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 20 Apr 2010
Google Inc.'s fight with China over Internet censorship made headlines around the world, but it has been engaged in similar battles around the globe.
At least 25 countries, many of them with repressive regimes but even those with democracies, have at times blocked the public's access to Google over the last several years. All told, more than 40 countries actively censor the Internet, compared with a handful in 2004, which is when the OpenNet Initiative, a group of academics, began tracking global censorship.
Censorship runs the gamut. Denmark bans child pornography. Iran has the most extensive filtering and surveillance system of any country, blocking access to all online content critical of the government. It stepped up its Internet crackdown and surveillance during the disputed presidential election last summer.
Some countries are setting up powerful electronic barriers, similar to the "Great Firewall" in China, to control what the public can access. Others, such as Belize, have blocked Google Talk and Microsoft's MSN Messenger, as well as other services that allow people to talk to one another over the Internet.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 19 Apr 2010
It's one thing to argue that government regulations will hamstring the Internet, as many opponents of Net neutrality regulations argue. But a new coalition of economic and social conservatives also argues that the FCC's proposed rules would prevent the Net from being hamstrung in the right way.
In a letter sent Thursday to members of Congress, leaders of 30 groups called on lawmakers to oppose the Net neutrality proposal, saying "the great success of the Internet has been made possible because the government has stayed out."
They went on, however, to warn that the proposed rules "call into question how obscenity and other objectionable content on the Internet is treated." In particular, the letter contends, Net neutrality "prohibits" ISPs from "preventing peddlers of child pornography from having unblocked access to every home Internet connection." Parents and families must "continue to have access to the tools necessary to keep unwanted content out of the home."
Gee, where to start? As the FCC has made abundantly clear over the six years its leaders have been talking about Net neutrality, the concept doesn't apply to illegal content. Obscenity and child pornography are just that -- illegal.
