Category Archives: Censorship

Sina and Tencent, which own Weibo and WeChat respectively, did not respond to requests for comment.

While Liu's case is an outlier in terms of the intense efforts to wipe out all mention of the deceased activist, it is in keeping with trends in Chinese online censorship that have been building since Xi assumed power in 2012.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

This month saw new bricks added to the wall, as Beijing went after two means of bypassing its controls.

That would be an extreme step, as VPNs are also used by many companies to enable secure networking and file sharing between offices.

Previously Beijing has tolerated commercial services offered to foreigners to allow them to access banned sites like Facebook and Twitter while they're in China --international hotels in major Chinese cities have also been known to offer this service.

Lokman Tsui, an expert on censorship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said it was "possible that some of the newer developments we have seen are experimental in nature, e.g. let's try and float this to see how well it works ... and see what public reaction we get."

Even if the VPN ban does not pan out, Tsui said, the direction things are going in is clear, and it's not positive.

It was one startlingly at odds with the free and open network expounded by the internet's inventors. In Xi's view, sovereignty, not freedom or communication or sharing, was the most important factor in online policy.

"Cyberspace is not a domain beyond the rule of law," Xi said. "Greater efforts should be made to strengthen ethical standards and promote civilized behavior."

Instead of the world wide web as we know it, countries would each maintain their own national internet, by force if necessary, with the border controls and immigration standards they see fit.

Peter Micek, general counsel for Access Now, which lobbies in favor of an open internet, said Chinese officials and technicians are increasingly working to water down protections for online freedoms at the United Nations and other bodies which oversee internet standards and governance.

"More and more Chinese engineers and engineers from Chinese companies are proposing and developing and adopting standards," he added.

Technical bodies like the International Telecommunication Union, the World Wide Web Consortium and others have huge influence on how the global internet operates, but sometimes with little transparency and limited democratic input.

"That's one place where quietly there is a more concerted effort (by China) to take control of what the internet actually is," Micek said.

China's efforts to influence global internet policy are largely designed to legitimize -- and prevent other countries from complaining about -- Beijing's existing controls on expression online, but they could have far-reaching consequences.

"A lot of governments would like to follow China's lead, and exercise if not complete control then effective control over the boundaries of what people can say and do online," Micek said.

Nor is the situation likely to improve anytime soon in China, said CUHK's Tsui.

"Other governments have definitely gotten worse at pushing back at Chinese censorship," he said, pointing to a push by the UK, US and others to water down encryption protections in the name of fighting terrorism.

"This allows China to say 'what we are doing is not so different'," he said. "Overall the trend is towards more censorship .. so the bar is getting lower, meaning it is easier for China to go even lower."

Back in China, controls are expected to ramp up even further as the country nears the all-important Communist Party Congress, the once every five years handover of power, at which the next Politburo Standing Committee, which runs the country, will be chosen. Some have suggested there may be a corresponding relaxation following the meeting, but experts CNN spoke to were skeptical.

Charlie Smith, co-founder of censorship watchdog GreatFire.org, said it was a mistake "to tie any crackdown on internet freedom in China to specific events or characters."

"Things started trending in the wrong direction when Xi Jinping took power," he said. "Regardless of what meetings are on the horizon, the authorities have been instructed to entirely control what people say, read, watch and hear on the internet."

Tsui said new trends like the WhatsApp block and crackdown on VPNs will either continue "or they are filing this knowledge away for future reference, to try again at some later date."

"The (Party Congress) is not the cure for the situation, it's not even a pain killer" Badiucao said. "I see no hope or willingness for the CCP to make a positive change."

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China internet censorship: WhatsApp crackdown only scratches the ... - CNN

Censorship is demeaning.

When the New York Times finds a professor of psychology to tell us that hold on to your seats words can actually hurt, and therefore certain speakers should be prohibited from campuses, it is arguing that the vulnerable students need protection from authorities on high.

When the U.K.s Advertising Standards Authority proposes to ban harmful traditional gender roles from all advertisements, it makes clear that it doesnt believe women can handle a depiction of a mother cleaning up after her family. Even if women are not bothered, they must be protected: They may not recognize harm because certain negative stereotypes are so normalised.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, the aforementioned professor of psychology, demeans us with science. On Sunday, she wrote, If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech at least certain types of speech can be a form of violence. This allowed her to conclude that its reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school and that we should halt any speech that bullies and torments.

Barretts conclusion does not follow from her premises. As Jesse Singal notes in New York, the studies that Barrett cites are mostly about chronic stress, attributable to prolonged and sustained emotional neglect or verbal abuse during childhood. They has nothing to do with attending a college at which a loathsome person happens to be giving a speech that can be protested or simply ignored. Yiannopoulos, stupid as he is, is not going to physically damage your brain by speaking on your campus.

Barrett surely knows this, which is why she adds that Yiannopoulos is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. Therein lies her sleight-of-hand: On the one hand, he can be banned because his words are literally violent, but on the other, it is acknowledged that his words dont actually cause physical harm, but only contribute to the larger campaign of abuse that can be claimed, without any evidence, to have equivalent effects to sustained verbal abuse during childhood.

Barrett poses as a faithful interpreter of scientific evidence, determined to protect students from the words endangering their telomeres. But in reality, her argument would pave the path to the criminalization of unpopular speech. Violence is dangerous, after all, and it merits state violence to subdue and prevent it. By her logic, any controversial speaker could be grouped with a campaign of some sort and thus made into a contributor to something akin to physical violence in its effects.

Consider what the results would be of treating this argument seriously. Take Linda Sarsour. Among her other activities, she delights in claiming that Zionists have no place in the feminist movement. So whats stopping me from saying that, while not physically harmful in themselves, Sarsours bullying statements join a larger campaign of abuse against Jews, and therefore deeming her speech responsible for causing chronic stress? Should she on these grounds be prohibitedfrom criticizing Zionism?

In Britain, you can be arrested for speech, even if its only an offensive Facebook post. This is all for the safety of the public, of course. On Tuesday, Britains Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) published a new report, pushing Britain further into the free-speech abyss. The report presented an evidence-based case for stronger regulation of ads that feature stereotypical gender roles or characteristics which might be harmful to people.

The report will form the basis of new standards to be created for 2018 by the ASAs sister organization, the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP). Together, the ASA and CAP self-regulate the advertising industry, a power they have been granted by the British government. Advertisers cannot opt out of their advertising codes unless theyd like to face sanctions as severe as criminal prosecution, imprisonment, and confiscation of financial assets.

This means that, for example, ads that depict men as stereotypically inept at performing housework or women cleaning up after a mess they did not make themselves will be prohibited. Ella Smillie, the lead author of the ASA report, says she hopes to ensure that modern society is better represented. I would have no problem with that, but it is not what Smillie has recommended. She has sought to forbid the representation of anything but modern society, whatever that means. So just like that, Britain will essentially make it illegal to depict my father and mother in advertisements.

To depict a man struggling with an old vacuum cleaner while a woman succeeds with a newer product would supposedly restrict the choices, aspirations, and opportunities of children, young people and adults. But again, this has nothing to do with expanding womens range of choices. Rather, the new proposals aim to promote one choice and forbid the representation of another.

The ASA claims its report is backed by a major independent research study by GfK, the German market research firm. But if you care to read the report in full, you will find its evidence laughably sparse. Free speech and liberty to offend does not correspond with a right to cause harm, its authors assert, unaware of how broad a claim they have just made. On this logic, one could call for the banning of a million books and the suppression of a thousand columnists for causing harm.

But the report continues, As the evidence links the depiction and reinforcement of stereotypes to unequal outcomes and real-word harms for men and women, it could be argued that the right to offend does not apply. But just a few lines earlier, the authors state that the literature is not conclusive on the role advertising plays in constructing or reinforcing gender stereotypes. In any event, these harms are suspect, relying on value judgments about men and women that the British people never authorized their advertising regulators to make. And the report uncritically presents very controversial claims about them, including about so-called stereotype threat. This is the contested idea that people will perform more poorly when they feel at risk of conforming to a stereotype.

Of course the media can encourage conformity, and of course the British regulators pose as advocates of choice and liberation from conventions. They cast themselves as protectors of women everywhere, vulnerable to have their ambitions crushed by ads for home appliances. However, this is just a pose. In reality, the regulators only offer a different, more modern conformity, casting traditional practices as not only unjust, but bad for your health.

In suppressing free speech, the paternalistic censors in Britain and at the Times cannot claim to be on the side of freedom or the little guy. Long past destroying the old orthodoxies, they seek to create new ones. While claiming to watch out for your interests, they pursue social engineering.

Elliot Kaufman is an editorial intern at National Review.

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Censorship: It's Always for Your Own Good - National Review

China's top cyber authority ordered the country's top tech firms to carry out "immediate cleaning and rectification" of their platforms to remove content deemed offensive to the Communist Party and the country's national image, it said on Wednesday.

The watchdog held a meeting with representatives from firms including Tencent Holdings ( tcehy ) , Baidu ( bidu ) and Sohu.com , on Tuesday where it gave them a list of specific errors, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement on social media.

The violations include distorting Chinese history, spreading fake news, misinterpreting policy directives and failing to block content that subverts public stability.

"[The sites] must adhere to the correct political line and moral norms," the statement said.

Chinese authorities have recently cracked down on platforms that allow users to share media from outlets that are not sanctioned under state-issued licenses, amid a wider censorship campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping.

On June 1 the CAC ushered in new regulations requiring all offline and online media outlets to be managed by Party-approved editorial staff. Workers in the approved outlets must receive training from local propaganda bureaus.

Related: Chinas WeChat Is a Censorship Juggernaut

In the wake of the new regulations several sites have been targeted with fines and closures under the watchdog's orders.

In specific examples, the CAC criticized one platform that failed to censor articles that "seriously deviated from socialist values" by saying China benefited from U.S. assistance during conflicts with Japan during World War II.

Other examples included a story detailing alleged affairs by party officials, an opinion piece that decried China's death penalty and an article that urged readers to invest in speculative real estate projects.

The CAC said the firms were required to immediately close offending accounts and strengthen "imperfect" auditing systems to avoid future punishment.

See more here:
China's Top Cyber Watchdog Is Making More Demands on Tech Firms - Fortune

Unlike most Western media platforms, including its parent company Facebook (FB, Tech30), the popular encrypted messaging app had managed to escape the attention of Chinese officials. Now it's firmly on their radar.

Multiple WhatsApp users contacted by CNNMoney reported they were unable to send images or videos on Tuesday. Cyber experts said they had seen further disruption on WhatsApp servers in China on Wednesday.

The servers were not completely blocked but are "largely unavailable," said Charlie Smith of GreatFire.org, a group that monitors internet censorship in the country.

"I have also conducted speed tests from China and these sites are not reachable," he told CNNMoney.

Nadim Kobeissi, an applied cryptographer at Paris-based startup Symbolic Software, said his team logged into the app via a Chinese server on Tuesday and were unable to send anything other than basic text messages.

"We realized that the servers that Whatsapp uses to exchange videos, photos and files were being blocked in the same way they would block Facebook, the BBC etc." Kobeissi said.

A WhatsApp spokesperson declined to comment when reached by CNNMoney. The Chinese government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has tightened internet censorship across the board in the run-up to the Communist Party's 19th Congress this fall, where a major senior leadership reshuffle is expected. A new cybersecurity law that took effect in June is expected to make it harder for foreign firms to operate in China.

"The combination of the new cybersecurity law, and the upcoming Party congress, in addition to restrictions on unregistered VPNs, all point to this being a concerted government effort to crack down on freedom of expression," said Peter Micek, general counsel at digital rights organization Access Now and a teacher of internet policy and governance at Columbia University.

A wave of politically sensitive news appears to have prompted an increase in Chinese censorship in recent weeks.

Related: Even in death, the Chinese government still censors activist Liu Xiaobo

In the wake of the death of Liu Xiaobo -- a prominent Chinese Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist -- last week, censors blocked people from posting the image of an empty chair to pay tribute. The Nobel committee put Liu's medal on an empty chair in the 2010 award ceremony because he was still in prison.

CNN's broadcast was blacked out in China every time Liu's images or story appeared.

Smith, of GreatFire, believes the WhatsApp crackdown is primarily linked to the activist's death.

"Censors are working overtime, trying to eliminate all information about him. They must have determined that Chinese were using WhatsApp to share pictures and videos of him and decided to crackdown," he said.

Last week, images of Winnie the Pooh were also reportedly censored on Chinese social media because internet users were comparing the cartoon bear to President Xi Jinping.

Related: Chinese internet censors crack down on ... Winnie the Pooh

On Weibo (WB), China's equivalent of Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), no results appear on searches for "Winnie the Pooh and Xi Jinping."

Related: Google's man-versus-machine showdown blocked in China

China has 731 million internet users, and 95% of them access the web on mobile devices, according to data from the China Internet Network Information Center.

Western media and tech companies have been trying to crack the market for decades but have largely failed.

Facebook (FB, Tech30), Google (GOOGL, Tech30), Instagram, Twitter (TWTR, Tech30), Snapchat (SNAP) and YouTube are among the Western services blocked in China.

The crackdown has given domestic companies such as Baidu (BIDU, Tech30), Youku, Sina (SINA) and Tencent (TCEHY) a huge advantage.

Experts say WhatsApp's appearance in the government's crosshairs may also be aimed at helping a local competitor -- Tencent's WeChat. Unlike WhatsApp, WeChat is unencrypted and thus far easier to monitor.

"The point of these attacks is to coerce the Chinese audience into using more open systems such as WeChat," Kobeissi said.

This week's disruption suggests the risk of a full-fledged ban is rising.

"A complete block is just a natural progression," said Smith. "Then gradually people will shift to WeChat."

-- Steven Jiang contributed to this article.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published July 20, 2017: 12:01 AM ET

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WhatsApp is being targeted by China's censors, experts say - CNNMoney

With the threat of a single gateway still looming over the heads of netizens, the recent dust-up over limiting access to Facebook content deemed inappropriate by the government, a future internet chock-full of stringent government controls still seems an inevitable reality.

While the government has asserted in the past that its motivation for any restrictions to the kingdoms internet access is cybersecurity, it would also seem that term covers blocking content it feels is not in its best interest which was recently the case when it requested the Thai Internet Service Provider Association, or TISPA, to engage Facebook in an attempt to get specific content blocked.

To be clear, its common practice for companies such as Facebook and Google to block content from specific countries such as Thailand if presented with a valid court order. From a social media platform perspective, its better to stay in business in a country by blocking some content than to be blocked altogether as has happened in China or North Korea.

What is not common practice though is for companies to take down content all together. That means, even when blocked, it remains accessible to people outside of the blocked country.

The issues related to a single gateway span far beyond the goal of preventing cybercrime or far more draconian attempts to limit access to information it can have a direct impact on the economy.

Given the economic policies being spearheaded under the Thailand 4.0 initiative and growth of tech startups in the past decade, shifting to a single gateway or regularly blocking social media content could undermine much of the intended progress.

With Thailand focused on moving toward a digital economy with the Thailand 4.0 initiative, its going to have to balance its concerns over digital content it deems illegal with the impact on platforms that many firms will leverage to do business.

Sure, finding ways to block content and take legal action against social media platforms might give the government more control over what it deems inappropriate or just doesnt want to see but also threatens to slow down content delivery to local users, making their experience less enjoyable. And if you are trying to grow a digital economy, creating an unpleasant online experience as the norm is not a positive feature.

User experience is a vital part of any digital business, and at a time when the digital economy is being pushed to the forefront of economic policies, it seems shortsighted to enact mechanisms that will ultimately hamper the proliferation of businesses that travel down this path.

If economic growth in all digital sectors is a target for Thailand, then policies such as content blocking and the single gateway will surely hinder not help that effort.

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Net Censorship Undermines Opportunities of 'Thailand 4.0' - Khaosod English

Jacob and Tab examine the history of censorship in horror by focusing on the Motion Picture Production Code (aka the Hays Code), the demise of horror comics through the forming of the Comics Code Authority, and the moral panic of the video nasties era in Britain. Join them as they explore the battle between monster kids and three super villains hell bent on squashing horror at every turn Joseph Breen, Dr. Frederic Wertham, and Mary Whitehouse!

Subscribe and Listen to Past Episodes: iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | Web Player

Test Pattern is made in the spirit of the old hosted monster movie shows of our youth a little bit spooky, a little bit silly, but always informative! Jacob and Tab have a new topic each week, with a focus on old school macabre films, favorite creature features, and B-movies.

You can interact with Tab and Jacob on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Test Pattern can also be heard on 103.5 FM in Wisconsin

The Bloody Disgusting Podcast Network consists of The Horror Show, Women in Caskets, Forever Midnight, Test Pattern, and Virtual Pros. All of these shows can be found on our iTunes Provider Page as well as the Bloody Disgusting App on all iOS and Android devices.

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[Podcasts] Test Pattern Episode 35: Censorship in Horror - The ... - Bloody Disgusting

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top cyber authority ordered the country's top tech firms to carry out "immediate cleaning and rectification" of their platforms to remove content deemed offensive to the Communist Party and the country's national image, it said on Wednesday.

The watchdog held a meeting with representatives from firms including Tencent Holdings Ltd, Baidu Inc and Sohu.com Inc, on Tuesday where it gave them a list of specific errors, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said in a statement on social media.

The violations include distorting Chinese history, spreading fake news, misinterpreting policy directives and failing to block content that subverts public stability.

"[The sites] must adhere to the correct political line and moral norms," the statement said.

Chinese authorities have recently cracked down on platforms that allow users to share media from outlets that are not sanctioned under state-issued licenses, amid a wider censorship campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping.

On June 1 the CAC ushered in new regulations requiring all offline and online media outlets to be managed by Party-approved editorial staff. Workers in the approved outlets must receive training from local propaganda bureaus.[nL4N1I42ID]

In the wake of the new regulations several sites have been targeted with fines and closures under the watchdog's orders.

In specific examples, the CAC criticised one platform that failed to censor articles that "seriously deviated from socialist values" by saying China benefited from U.S. assistance during conflicts with Japan during World War II.

Other examples included a story detailing alleged affairs by party officials, an opinion piece that decried China's death penalty and an article that urged readers to invest in speculative real estate projects.

The CAC said the firms were required to immediately close offending accounts and strengthen "imperfect" auditing systems to avoid future punishment.

Reporting by Cate Cadell; editing by Susan Thomas

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China's cyber watchdog orders top tech platforms to increase self ... - Reuters

Imagine trying to do online research on breast cancer, or William S. Burroughs famous novel Naked Lunch, only to find that your search results keep coming up blank. This is the confounding situation that faced Microsoft Bing users in the Middle East and North Africa for years, made especially confusing by the fact that if you tried the same searches on Google, it did offer results for these terms.

Problems caused by the voluntary blocking of certain terms by intermediaries are well-known; just last week, we wrote about how payment processors like Venmo are blocking payments from users who describe the payments using certain termslike Isis, a common first name and name of a heavy metal band, in addition to its usage as an acronym for the Islamic State. Such keyword-based filtering algorithms will inevitably results in overblocking and false positives because of their disregard for the context in which the words are used.

Search engines also engage in this type of censorshipin 2010, I co-authored a paper [PDF] documenting how Microsoft Bing (brand new at the time) engaged in filtering of sex-related terms in the Middle East and North Africa, China, India, and several other locations by not allowing users to turn off safe search. Despite the paper and various advocacy efforts over the years, Microsoft refused to budge on thisuntil recently.

At RightsCon this year, I led a panel discussion about the censorship of sexuality online, covering a variety of topics from Facebooks prudish ideas about the female body to the UKs restrictions on non-conventional sex acts in pornography to Icelands various attempts to ban online pornography. During the panel, I also raised the issue of Microsofts long-term ban on sexual search terms in the Middle East, noting specifically that the companys blanket ban on the entire region seemed more a result of bad market research than government interference, based on the fact that a majority of countries in the MENA region do not block pornography, let alone other sexual content.

Surprisingly, not long after the conference, I did a routine check of Bing and was pleased to discover that Middle East had disappeared from the search engines location settings, replaced with Saudi Arabia. The search terms are still restricted in Saudi Arabia (likely at the request of the government), but users in other countries across the diverse region are no longer subject to Microsofts safe search. Coincidence? It's hard to say; just as we didn't know Microsoft's motivations for blacklisting sexual terms to begin with, it was no more transparent about its change of heart.

Standing up against this kind of overbroad private censorship is importantcompanies shouldnt be making decisions based on assumptions about a given market, and without transparency and accountability. Decisions to restrict content for a particular reason should be made only when legally required, and with the highest degree of transparency possible. We commend Microsoft for rectifying their error, and would like to see them continue to make their search filtering policies and practices more open and transparent.

Continued here:
Microsoft Bing Reverses Sex-Related Censorship in the Middle East - EFF

Users of WhatsApp in China and security researchers have reported widespread service disruptions amid fears that the popular messaging service may be at least partially blocked by authorities in the world's most populous country.

WhatsApp users in China reported Tuesday on other social media platforms that the app was partly inaccessible unless virtual private network software was used to circumvent China's censorship apparatus, known colloquially as The Great Firewall.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook and offers end-to-end encryption, has a relatively small but loyal following among users seeking a greater degree of privacy from government snooping than afforded by popular domestic app WeChat, which is ubiquitous but closely monitored and filtered.

Questions over WhatsApp's status come at a politically fraught time in China. The government is in the midst of preparing for a sensitive party congress while Chinese censors this week revved up a sprawling effort to scrub all mention of Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died Thursday in government custody.

A report this week by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab detailed how Chinese censors were able to intercept, in real time, images commemorating Liu in private one-on-one chats on WeChat, a feat that hinted at the government's image recognition capabilities.

It appeared that pictures were also the focus of the move to censor WhatsApp. Late Tuesday, users in China could send texts over WhatsApp without the use of VPNs, but not images.

Nadim Kobeissi, a cryptography researcher based in Paris who has been investigating the WhatsApp disruption, said he believed The Great Firewall was only blocking access to WhatsApp servers that route media between users, while leaving servers that handle text messages untouched. He said voice messages also appeared to be blocked.

But there was no evidence to suggest that Chinese authorities were decrypting WhatsApp messages, Kobeissi added.

A Chinese censorship researcher known by his pseudonym Charlie Smith said authorities appeared to be blocking non-text WhatsApp messages wholesale precisely because they have not been able to selectively block content on the platform like they have with WeChat, which is produced by Shenzhen-based internet giant Tencent and legally bound to cooperate with Chinese security agencies.

Because WhatsApp content is encrypted, "they have moved to brute censor all non-text content," Smith said in an email. "It would not be surprising to find that everything on WhatsApp gets blocked, forcing users in China to use unencrypted, monitored and censored services like WeChat."

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he had no information on the issue when asked by reporters on Tuesday.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. WhatsApp is one of the world's most widely used messaging services, with over 1.2 billion users.

Signal, another encrypted messaging service, appeared to also have patchy service with significant delays.

China has long blocked Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, with officials arguing that foreign social media services operating beyond their control pose a threat to national security. But authorities in China, as with other governments, are paying increasing attention to encrypted messaging apps.

After Beijing waged its largest-ever crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists in 2015, the People's Daily newspaper, the ruling Communist Party's official mouthpiece, singled out Telegram as the platform where lawyers the coordinated their activities. And in closely orchestrated and televised trials, the arrested lawyers read scripted confessions explaining how they used the apps to communicate freely with collaborators overseas.

Telegram has since been blocked, with many Chinese dissidents switching in recent months to WhatsApp.

The progressive tightening of messaging apps forces Chinese users to resort to domestic apps such as WeChat "to simply function and have day-to-day communications," said Kobeissi, the security researcher. "Then they can be monitored en masse."

Follow Gerry Shih on Twitter at twitter.com/gerryshih

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China users report WhatsApp disruption amid censorship fears - ABC News

(Image: Citizen Lab)

Researchers at Citizen Lab have noticed a censorship crackdown on WeChat and Weibo in wake of the death of Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights campaigner Liu Xiaobo last week.

The research group within the University of Toronto used a set of phones registered to WeChat with mainland Chinese phone numbers, and another set registered with numbers outside China.

By sending a number of messages to test which words were blocked, Citizen Lab concluded censorship from Beijing was "more expansive and blunt".

"Before his death, messages were blocked that contained his name in combination with other words, for example those related to his medical treatment or requests to receive care abroad," it said. "However, after his death, we found that simply including his name was enough to trigger blocking of messages, in English and both simplified and traditional Chinese."

"In other words, WeChat issued a blanket ban on his name after his death, greatly expanding the scope of censorship."

Citizen Lab also found Tencent-owned WeChat was blocking images referencing Liu Xiaobo throughout its services, and for the first time censoring messages between users.

The group's results showed 74 images were blocked on WeChat Moments, 26 blocked within group chats, and 19 blocked in direct messaging between users.

"It is unclear why only a subset of the images blocked on group chat were also blocked on one-to-one chat," Citizen Lab wrote. "It would be technically convenient to enforce censorship of the same sets of images in chat functions."

"One possible explanation is that censorship in smaller, more private spaces is most disruptive and noticeable to users as opposed to ones with larger audiences."

In all instances of censorship occurring on WeChat, the user is not informed that content is removed, Citizen Lab said.

The Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Weibo was found by Citizen Lab to be even more heavily censored.

Meanwhile, AP is reporting WhatsApp is partially blocked in China, with users unable to send images or voice messages via the service.

One service already banned in China, Telegram, had the prospect of a ban in Indonesia floated last week by Jakarta.

Telegram had too much content promoting radicalism, extremism and "hatred belief", and needed to be blocked to safeguard the "integrity" of the republic, Indonesia's communication ministry announced on Friday.

The web version of the messaging service can no longer be accessed in the archipelago, with preparations to also shut down the application if the company does not prepare standard operating procedures, the government said.

Telegram's CEO Pavel Durov said on Sunday the ministry had contacted them with a list of public channels with terrorism-related content but his team was "unable to quickly process" them.

Those channels are now blocked and it is forming "a dedicated team of moderators with knowledge of the Indonesian language and culture to be able to process reports of terrorist-related content more quickly and accurately".

Telegram, he added, had "several million" users in Indonesia.

As for the western world, Australia has made the running for the Five Eyes nations -- the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand -- on the topic of encryption and the problems it poses for law enforcement in recent weeks.

Last week, Australian Attorney-General George Brandis said draft legislation was being written to compel technology companies to turn over the content of end-to-end encrypted messages by the end of the year.

"Last Wednesday, I met with the chief cryptographer at GCHQ ... and he assured me this was feasible," Brandis said.

"What the government is proposing to do is to impose upon the companies an obligation conditioned by reasonableness and proportionality."

Brandis stated he believes the process of breaking into end-to-end encrypted messages can be done in almost real time, since GCHQ has told him it is possible.

On Friday, Turnbull told ZDNet that the laws produced in Canberra are able to trump the laws of mathematics.

"The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that," he said. "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia."

With AAP

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Chinese censorship cracks down on WeChat, Weibo, WhatsApp - ZDNet