-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 19 Apr 2010
On March 23, the day after Google pulled its search operations out of mainland China, a woman who uses the online pseudonym Xiaomi arose in her Shanghai apartment and sat down in her bedroom office for another day of outwitting Internet censorship. She leads a confederation of volunteer translators around the world who turn out Mandarin versions of Western journalism and scholarly works that are banned on China's Internet--and that wouldn't be available in Mandarin in any case. That day, working in a communal Google Docs account, she and her fellow volunteers completed translations of texts that ranged from a fresh New York Times interview with Google cofounder Sergey Brin to "The Limits of Authoritarian Resilience," a seven-year-old analysis of China's Communist Party from the Journal of Democracy.
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 19 Apr 2010
As the Obama administration looks for big ideas to shape its foreign policy, officials should consult a new book that argues, in effect, that America's "Manifest Destiny" in the 21st century is to extend to the world the standards of our own First Amendment.
This press-freedom manifesto carries the zesty title "Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open" and was written by Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University. I teased him at a symposium last week that if journalists were to write their own description of the media landscape, it would carry a gloomier moniker such as "Nervous, Broke and Hunkered-Down." Bollinger's point is that in a globalized economy, we need rules that ensure open access to information. What we're seeing instead, from China to Iran, is a drive by authoritarian governments to manipulate those information flows. This squeeze affects private companies such as Google and news organizations such as The Post. But, as Bollinger says, there's a compelling public interest for the U.S. government in keeping the information flows as unhindered as possible.
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 19 Apr 2010
According to the rights organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), present at the Re:publica digital media conference in Berlin, about 120 bloggers and online reporters are currently in jail because of their work.
More than half of them are imprisoned in China, one of the countries most criticized for its rigid online censorship. Last month, RSF welcomed Google’s decision to stop censoring its Chinese language search engine and to move its operations to Hong Kong.
“Companies who obey the demands of oppressive regimes are accomplices to censorship,” said Lucie Morillon, the head of Reporters Without Borders’ new media desk. ”They are helping to silence basically those people who want to express dissident views. They are helping regimes to stay in place.”
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 16 Apr 2010
The cyber-safety debate has no easy answers but blocking access, Ari Sharp writes, comes down to whether to patrol - or control.
It was hardly the finding the government wanted to hear. When the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, commissioned technology company Enex TestLab to test his proposed internet filter, he was hoping it would provide support for the policy close to his heart. When the report came back in October, it backed the government's claim that a filter applied by internet service providers could accurately block access to prohibited sites.
However, it delivered a finding that fundamentally appeared to undermine the plan: ''A technically competent user could, if they wished, circumvent the filtering technology.''
Far from using the finding as a reason to quietly abandon the filter on websites rated ''refused classification'' (RC) under Australia's censorship rules, the conclusion only strengthened the minister's resolve to push ahead.
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 16 Apr 2010
A TEENAGER famous for cracking the Howard government's $80 million web filter will be among the first lining up to get around the Rudd Government's as well - and there won't be any penalty for doing it.
The office of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy this week confirmed it would not be an offence to bypass the Government's planned mandatory internet filter once it was introduced.
The admission comes after pro-euthanasia group Exit International began teaching elderly Australians how to bypass internet filters earlier this month amid fears information about euthanasia would be censored under the plan.
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 16 Apr 2010
The Government has been having high-level discussions on introducing internet blocking, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON
THE GOVERNMENT has had extensive private discussions on introducing internet blocking – barring access to websites or domains – according to material obtained under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.
The approach is used by some internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile network operators to block access to child pornography. But increasingly, governments and law enforcement agencies are pushing for much broader use, ranging from blocking filesharing sites to trying to tackle cybercrime and terrorism.
Critics say internet blocking creates many problems with little real effect on illegal activity. For example, internet users and businesses have complained about the side-effects of domain blocking, where barring access to domains can shut down hundreds of personal and business websites as well as e-mail addresses associated with them.
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 16 Apr 2010
Ireland may be joining repressive regimes North Korea, China and Iran by censoring the Internet for law-abiding citizens.
According to a report in The Irish Times, the government has been in extensive private discussions on the possibility of blocking access to certain Web sites and domains. The government hopes these filters could serve a range of uses, from blocking filesharing sites to trying to tackle cybercrime and terrorism.
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 15 Apr 2010
Mexican drug cartels appear to have adopted a new technique to avoid military raids and police checkpoints: using Facebook and Twitter. And so now the Mexican government is trying to crack down ... on the use of Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook has been on the radar of government officials who believe that it has been used to facilitate the abduction of the relatives of powerful businessmen and politicians, with kidnappers allegedly using the social-networking site to discover the identities of a high-profile person's family members. Meanwhile, authorities, already peeved that ordinary citizens have been using Twitter to alert one another to the locations of Breathalyzer checkpoints via @antiaa_df, are now furious that drug dealers are using Twitter accounts to circumvent dragnets and communicate with one another.
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 14 Apr 2010
(Reuters) - A browser that bypasses censors has become the most popular way to access the Internet in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian state where sites critical of the government are often blocked, a Web statistics firm said.
The Norwegian developed Opera browser made by Opera Software has increased its market share sharply in the ex-Soviet state since it began to allow downloads of compressed web pages via a server outside the country -- a feature designed to speed browsing.
The Opera browser is now the most popular in the country with a market share of 32 percent, beating out rival products from Google, Microsoft and Apple, according to statistics for March from Web analytics firm StatCounter.
The browser has increased its popularity by 60 percent in the past year alone, Opera Software said.
-
By: Jillian C. York
Date: 14 Apr 2010
From the start, Internet users have taken for granted that the territory was both a free-for-all and a digital disguise, allowing them to revel in their power to address the world while keeping their identities concealed.
Enlarge This Image
Mark Duncan/Associated Press; Jim Wilson/The New York Times;
Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold, left, is suing The Plain Dealer of Cleveland, led by Susan Goldberg, saying the paper violated her privacy in reporting on comments sent from her e-mail address.
A New Yorker cartoon from 1993, during the Web’s infancy, with one mutt saying to another, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” became an emblem of that freedom. For years, it was the magazine’s most reproduced cartoon.
When news sites, after years of hanging back, embraced the idea of allowing readers to post comments, the near-universal assumption was that anyone could weigh in and remain anonymous. But now, that idea is under attack from several directions, and journalists, more than ever, are questioning whether anonymity should be a given on news sites.
The Washington Post plans to revise its comments policy over the next several months, and one of the ideas under consideration is to give greater prominence to commenters using real names.
