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Category Archives: Censorship

Someone hijacked the Google of China to attack anti-censorship tools

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An unknown party hijacked widely used tools developed byBaidu, the largest search engine in China, this week in an apparent attempt to target onlinesoftwareused to get around Chinese censorship.

The assailants injected malicious code into the tools Baidu uses to serve ads on a wide range of Chinese Web sites and to provide analytics for Web developers, according to researchers. The code instructed the browsers of visitors to those sites to rapidly connect to other sites, but in a way that the visitors couldn't detect. That sent a flood of traffic to twoanti-censorship tools offered by the groupGreatFire hosted on GitHub, apopular siteused by programmers to collaborate on software development. One of the tools targeted by the attackeffectively allows Chinese users to access a translated version of the New York Times.

At times the attack made GitHub, which is used by programmers around the world and the U.S. government itself, unavailable for some users.

GitHub was briefly blocked inside China in 2013, but reinstated after an outcry from programmers. Because GitHub uses encryption to hide specific parts of the site, the Chinese government cannotselectively block only some of GitHub'scontent. But blocking the site wholesale could be damaging to China's economy becauseit is so widely used by the tech industry.

GreatFire reported its own site was the subject of a similar traffic flooding attack earlier this month.

While determining the entities behind these types of attacks is difficult, the Chinese government would be an obvious culprit, said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies."The only people who would really benefit from it would be China," he said. Using such a bold tactic to attack content it dislikes seems to be either a way for the government to send a message or test out new capabilities, he said.

[Related: Is this North Korea? Chinese netizens squirm as party tightens grip on Internet.]

"The last couple months we've seen a real sea change in Chinese Internet policy, where they've become more assertive about blocking Western sites and pushing back on their citizen's ability to access information from outside of the country," Lewis said. Earlier this year, many virtual private network (VPN) services relied on by Chinese citizens to evade censorshipbecame inaccessiblewithin the country.

Baidu -- which is basically China's Google -- denied involvement in the incident. "After a thorough investigation, Baidu security engineers have ruled out either security issues with Baidu products or a hacking attack on Baidu as possibilities," the company told The Washington Post in a statement. "We have been in touch with other security organizations to apprise them of the situation, and we will work together on getting to the bottom of related issues."

GreatFire did not immediately respond to a Washington Post inquiry about the attacks. Nor did the Chinese government. GitHub acknowledged it was the victim of a "continuous" attack for more than 24 hours in a Tweet posted late Thursday night. The latest update on the GitHub's status pagesays the service is "intermittently unavailable for some users" due to the attack.

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Someone hijacked the Google of China to attack anti-censorship tools

Filing sealed by court is unlawful censorship, newspaper attorneys argue

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An appellate court order sealing a previously public court filing that disclosed parts of a report on an officer-involved shooting was an unconstitutional censorship of the press, attorneys for the Los AngelesTimes and other news organizations wrote in papers filed Thursday.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal on Wednesday ordered sealed a document filed nine days earlier by the Pasadena Police Officers Assn., which included about a dozen excerpts from an independent consultants report on the 2012 fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager by two Pasadena police officers.

An attorney for the union asked for the order, saying the union's filing had "inadvertently, and mistakenly, included verbatim excerpts" of the report it had previously argued was the officers confidential personnel information and should remain secret. The union was challenging a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge's ruling in October that portions of the report could be released.

In an opposition filed Thursday, attorneys for The Times argued that because the information had already been handed over to members of the public and the newspaper, sealing it after the fact would in effect be prior restraint, or censoring information before publication.

The result of the Courts Order has been the immediate and absolute chilling of the [newspapers] speech, attorneys wrote, calling the unions request for the order more than a week after its papers were madepublicly available an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle.

Noting that the U.S. Supreme Court has said only information such as the movement of troops at wartime or information that would set in motion a nuclear holocaust would justify prior restraint, the newspapers attorneys wrote that the unions situation does not come close to presenting such extraordinary circumstances.

Police union attorney Richard Shinee did not respond to a request for comment Thursday afternoon.

A coalition of several media and 1st Amendment organizations, including the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, separately asked to be heard in the case and urged the court to reverse its sealing order, calling it unconstitutional.

Permitting the March 25 order to stand would set a dangerous precedent of restricting publication of lawfully obtained information, attorneys for the press and free speech organizations wrote. The order removes information of public concern from the hands of the media, preventing the press everywhere from reporting on issues of intense public interest.

The case arose out of the death of Kendrec McDade, a 19-year-old who was shot and killed by Officers Matthew Griffin and Jeffrey Newlen as they responded to a report of armed robbery. The shooting was determined to be justified by the Los Angeles County district attorney'soffice and by the police departments internal review.

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Filing sealed by court is unlawful censorship, newspaper attorneys argue

Ayutha Ezhuthu – Debate On "Need Of Censorship On Social Media"(23/03/2015) Thanthi TV – Video

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Ayutha Ezhuthu - Debate On "Need Of Censorship On Social Media"(23/03/2015) Thanthi TV
Ayutha Ezhuthu - Debate On "Need Of Censorship On Social Media"(23/03/2015) Thanthi TV Catch us LIVE @ http://www.thanthitv.com/ Follow us on - Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/ThanthiTV ...

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Ayutha Ezhuthu - Debate On "Need Of Censorship On Social Media"(23/03/2015) Thanthi TV - Video

Media censorship of the Qld Parli lifted as Labor returns to government 3 years after defeat – Video

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Media censorship of the Qld Parli lifted as Labor returns to government 3 years after defeat
March 24, 2015: Nearly two months after the election, politicians have finally taken their seats at state parliament.

By: Qldaah

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Media censorship of the Qld Parli lifted as Labor returns to government 3 years after defeat - Video

Mori TV CEO called to account over censorship of Te Iti Kahurangi haka – Video

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Mori TV CEO called to account over censorship of Te Iti Kahurangi haka
Mori TV CEO Paora Maxwell says he made the decision to censor Te Iti Kahurangi #39;s haka because he was protecting the mana of Mori TV and its staff. Mori TV management were in the Mori...

By: Te Karere TVNZ

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Mori TV CEO called to account over censorship of Te Iti Kahurangi haka - Video

DIVERGENT | Unnecessary Censorship | Censored Parody Bleep Video – Video

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DIVERGENT | Unnecessary Censorship | Censored Parody Bleep Video
I didn #39;t watch the second half of this movie yet. What happens? Ahh I don #39;t care much. Here #39;s LETS CENSOR: Divergent Part 1. Part 2 is in the works and will be released when we get 200 likes....

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DIVERGENT | Unnecessary Censorship | Censored Parody Bleep Video - Video

Publishers Warn of Censorship in Hong Kong

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HONG KONG

Book publishers are decrying a rise in censorship in Hong Kong, saying book stores are returning books tied to authors who have been involved in the pro-democracy protests.

In recent weeks, authors and publishers say censorship is growing in Hong Kong, with bookstores under increasing pressure to edit their selection of books so that they do not offend the central government in Chinas mainland.

The editor-in-chief of Up Publications, Carmen Kwong Wing-suen, said her company had hundreds of books returned by Sino United Publishing through its subsidiaries Joint Publishing, Chung Hwa Book and Commercial Press.

We are just a tiny little publishing house. We have no bargaining power to do anything," she said.

Rising trend

Kwong said a publication she co-wrote on the Occupy Protests had received orders for only 28 copies instead of the normal practice of 200 copies. She said most of the books recently rejected by the publisher were not on political topics.

Former reporter Bruce Lui Ping-kuen, now a professor of journalism at Baptist University, said the rejection of books by publishers sympathetic to the pro-democracy movement is part of an increasing trend of censorship in the city.

I think looking at the book censorship case in a way its a reflection of the differences between censorship in Hong Kong and the censorship we have under one country two systems," he said.

"Because they cannot censor books and the media directly. There is no censorship system because we are under one country, two systems. And so they have to find creative ways to limit or stop voices that are hostile to the Communist Party.

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Publishers Warn of Censorship in Hong Kong

Censorship row over Clean Reader app that takes swear words out of ebooks

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Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, has lead charge against censoring app Said app was no different to suppression of books throughouthistory Software blocks offensive words in e-books, including the word 'damn'

By Laura Cox for the Daily Mail

Published: 18:38 EST, 24 March 2015 | Updated: 18:48 EST, 24 March 2015

Chocolat author Joanne Harris blasted the app, saying what starts out with blanking out a few words ends with 'burning libraries'

As one person bluntly put, it is f****** horrifying.

An app that blanks out swear words in e-books has prompted outrage among writers including Chocolat author Joanne Harris, who have accused it of censoring their work without permission.

Last night Mrs Harris, 50, took to her blog to write a scathing critique of the Clean Reader application which has been designed to help parents protect their children from explicit content.

It operates on a sliding scale from clean, which removes only the worst swear words, to squeaky clean which even takes out damn.

Condemning the app on her blog, in a post titled why Im saying f*** you to Clean Reader, Mrs Harris, whose book was turned into a Hollywood film starring Juliette Binoche, 51, and Johnny Depp, 51, likened the programme to examples of suppression from history.

She said: 'Anyone who works with words understands their power. Words, if used correctly, can achieve almost anything.

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Censorship row over Clean Reader app that takes swear words out of ebooks

Bollywood filmmakers hold meeting with I&B ministry over censorship – Video

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Bollywood filmmakers hold meeting with I B ministry over censorship
Multiple ways of watching INDTVUSA -Watch on http://www.indtvusa.com Click Live TV tab -Watch it on any device that has internet -Add INDTVUSA channel on Roku. Like, Follow, Subscribe and Share...

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