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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 30 Nov 2010
n the first test of WikiLeaks’ resiliency since a staff rebellion earlier this year, the organization recovered within hours from a distributed denial-of-service attack during its rollout of leaked State Department cables Sunday. But experts who monitored the disruptive traffic say the attack was relatively modest in size.
WikiLeaks’ main web address and its “cablegate” site were unreachable as the organization’s media partners published their first analyses from a massive trove of a quarter-million U.S. diplomatic cables Sunday afternoon. Hours earlier, WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter: “We are currently under a mass distributed denial-of-service attack.”
But Arbor Networks, which analyzes malicious network traffic crossing the internet’s backbones, reports that the DDoS generated between 2 and 4 Gbps of disruptive traffic, slightly above the average for all DDoS attacks, but well below the peak 60 to 100 Gbps consumed by truly massive attacks against other websites over the last year.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 30 Nov 2010
In March 2009 the authority revealed that a number of pages on Wikileaks were put on the blacklist of banned websites because the pages linked to websites on Denmark's blacklist.
"Currently, the ACMA list of prohibited URLs that is notified to accredited filter providers does not contain any URLs within the Wikileaks website," the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told ZDNet UK's sister site ZDNet Australia in a statement. "Since April 2010, the ACMA has investigated two complaints about specific pages of content on the Wikileaks website, which both resolved to content found to be not prohibited."
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 22 Nov 2010
With China evidently in its sights, Google has released a policy paper contending that countries that limit Internet users’ access to information providers outside their borders violate their World Trade Organization commitments.
The company did not single out China in the position paper. But Google has had a running battle with Beijing over censorship, and many of the examples cited in the paper came from the company’s experiences with China.
The paper was published online Monday but went largely unnoticed until bloggers started writing about it Tuesday.
Bob Boorstin, Google’s public policy director, made the free-trade link forcefully in a posting on Google’s public policy blog, although he stopped short of mentioning China specifically.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 18 Nov 2010
The Middle East's modest window for dissent, created by a surge in blogging and online journalism over the past decade, looks poised to narrow with a raft of measures across the region.
A draft Internet law awaiting parliamentary approval in Syria is one such measure. The government says it would give a needed legal framework to online activity by forcing bloggers to register as union members, conferring rights such as a press card to online journalists for the first time, and potentially requiring content be withdrawn from websites.
Online journalists and bloggers in Syria, already subject to harassment and imprisonment, are concerned that the law is designed to crack down on their activities and restrict freedom of expression. Media analysts say parliamentary approval is likely to come soon.
Since Syria's online sphere began to blossom in 2000, Syrian websites – which face less scrutiny than the country's print media – have been able to publish stories on sensitive subjects such as the army and corruption. They have recently brought to light a controversial personal status law and the issue of corporal punishment.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 18 Nov 2010
Just before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Hanoi late last month, Vietnamese authorities redoubled their assault on Internet dissent. Two more bloggers were arrested and another due to be released had his sentence extended. Dissident websites came under cyber attack, taking them offline at a time when they most needed to be visible.
Meanwhile in Washington, a battle is raging over funding for organizations and projects supporting "Internet freedom." Like many Washington fights, this one makes it harder for the U.S. government to help real people with real problems.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 17 Nov 2010
The Nepalese government has been in discussions about banning particular websites for several months, but the ban was only actualized today. It mostly targets porn sites, but others, such as the punk band The Sex Pistols' Web page, was included in the ban. Among the 60 outlawed destinations is the Huffington Post.
The news comes at a time when the government is largely in flux, as it has been for months, and the Interior Ministry spokesman, Jai Mukunda Khanal, is the representative who broke the news to the public today.
"The websites have been banned because they violate public decency and courtesy," Jai Mukunda Khanal said. The ruling also applies to messages posted on Facebook and Twitter. Anyone displaying, transmitting, and broadcasting materials deemed indecent--or post messages defaming political leaders or other public figures--could be jailed for up to five years and fined as much as $1,420, according to the AP.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 17 Nov 2010
WASHINGTON — Google Inc., owner of the world’s most popular Internet search engine, is urging the US government to challenge Internet censorship abroad as an unfair trade barrier.
China, Vietnam, Iran, and Turkey are among the countries that have shut off search engines, blogging platforms, or social-media websites such as Facebook, Google said yesterday. Such actions are harming the ability of US companies to profit, Google said.
“Governments around the world are restricting, censoring, and disrupting the free flow of online information in record numbers,’’ said a Google “white paper’’ posted on its blog. “These actions unnecessarily restrict trade, and left unchecked, they will almost certainly get worse.’’
In January, Google disclosed that Chinese hackers had targeted its mail servers and said it would no longer censor search results in the country. Google then redirected all searches in China to a site in Hong Kong.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 12 Nov 2010
The government has today launched a review of its controversial "Prevent" counter-terrorism strategy, which includes measures to tackle extremist material online.
The wide-ranging review could lead to greater censorship of the web.
The Home Secretary, Theresa May, said today: "I believe the Prevent programme isn't working as well as it could, and that is why we are reviewing it. I want a strategy that is effective and properly focused."
Recent high-profile crimes have again focused attention on how Islamic extremists use the internet to promote their violent ideology. The online preaching of the US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was cited by Roshonara Choudhry – the 21-year-old woman convicted last week of attempting to murder her MP, Stephen Timms – as a radicalising influence.
Al-Awlaki, now based in Yemen, was also thought to be behind the foiled cargo bomb plot. YouTube last week took down dozens of his videos following pressure from British and American officials.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 10 Nov 2010
A Chinese court has handed down a two-and-a-half year jail sentence to a man who organised a website for parents of children who became ill from drinking tainted milk after his own son became sick.
The court found Zhao Lianhai guilty of "inciting social disorder", his wife Li Xuemei told Reuters.
"Of course we cannot accept this. We will appeal. This is something we have to do," Li said by telephone after the verdict was read out in a Beijing court.
Zhao founded "Kidney Stone Babies" in 2008 to provide information and resources for parents after about 300,000 Chinese infants were taken ill, with some 50,000 hospitalised, after drinking milk formula deliberately tainted with melamine. At least six babies died.
Police formally arrested Zhao last December, charging him with the crime of picking quarrels and provoking trouble. The charge carries a maximum penalty of five years' imprisonment.
"He has already been in jail almost a year. It's so unfair," Li added.
Amnesty International condemned the sentence.
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By: Jillian C. York
Date: 10 Nov 2010
IDG News Service - China's strict controls on its Internet usage will eventually fail as more of the country's people go online and express themselves, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
"Ultimately, the people will win over the government. The yearning is so strong," he said Wednesday during a talk hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Schmidt's comments come several months after Google announced it would stop censoring its search results in China. But even as Google has attempted to provide unfiltered search results by redirecting users in China to the company's Hong Kong search engine, the Chinese government continues to block certain searches.
China currently has 420 million Internet users, according to Chinese government statistics. But certain sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are blocked. At the same time, China heavily invests into policing the web, using a large organization of regulators that are estimated to number from 30,000 to 50,000, Schmidt said.
