Category Archives: Censorship

BEIJING At a rare public forum on cyberissues Tuesday featuring American and Chinese government officials, U.S. diplomats and business leaders tried using economic arguments to persuade China to stop its cyberattacks and Internet censorship.

Chinas heavy-handed Web restrictions not only slow Internet speeds and make company data less secure, but they also have tangible economic effects on the country, said Gary Locke, the U.S. ambassador to China.

Undersecretary of State Robert Hormats was even more blunt in calling out China for its actions.

I ask my Chinese friends to question whether this kind of activity serves Chinas real interests as it seeks to attract high-end investment, aims to develop international markets for its innovative products, and wants its companies welcomed and respected as they increasingly invest around the world, Hormats said.

In recent months, after news reports publicly tied cyberattacks originating from China to the Chinese military, U.S. officials have taken a harsher and more direct tone in confronting China on the issue.

Tuesdays comments were made during an Internet forum sponsored by Microsoft, which carefully featured an equal number of Chinese and U.S. officials.

Chinese officials stuck mostly to previous boilerplate responses to such accusations: China is in the early stages of its development; far from perpetrating cyberattacks, China is among the most frequent targets; andChina opposes the actions of rogue hackers.

One Chinese official, however, went on the offensive.

Recently some people have cooked up this theory of a Chinese cybersecurity threat, said Qian Xiaoqian, vice minister of Chinas State Council Information Office. It is a variation on the popular theory of a rising China threat.

China has long opposed hacking, he said, and thinks we shouldnt militarize the cyberspace and attack other countries in violation of laws and regulations and also in violation of moral standards.

Go here to read the rest:
U.S. government, business leaders push China on cyberattacks, Internet censorship

PARIS, April 8 (UPI) -- France's secret service is facing accusations of censorship for allegedly threatening to arrest a volunteer at the French version of Wikipedia over an article.

Intelligence operatives allegedly threatened to arrest and charge the volunteer unless he deleted an article on the Internet encyclopedia they claimed contained "classified" military secrets and was a risk to national security, the British newspaper The Guardian reported.

Wikipedia said the Direction Central du Renseignement Interieur failed to provide proof the article about a French military radio relay station that has been online since 2009 was a threat to the country's security or produce a legal order justifying its threats against the site.

"This is shocking and absolutely wrong," Christophe Henner, vice president of Wikimedia France, said. "We have always operated within the law and have no desire to pose a threat to individuals or nations."

The page "corresponds almost perfectly" to a publicly available television report about the military station 70 miles west of Lyon, Wikipedia said.

The station is under the control of the French air force and thought to be part of France's nuclear detection and deterrent network.

"Had the DCRI presented us with documents or a legal order showing us this was a threat to national security we would have taken down the page at once," Henner said. "Instead they summoned one of our volunteers and ordered him to take it down, saying he would be held in custody if he didn't."

The rest is here:
French secret service in censorship flap

Today in international tech news: After failed threats, France's intelligence agency draws thousands of eyes to the Wikipedia page it wanted removed. Also: A human rights group will equip activists with an electronic tracking bracelet that can trip a social media alarm; a European telecom gets big dough from Canada -- again -- to use BlackBerry; and China's Tencent defuses online angst and confirms its WeChat app will remain free.

Intelligence agents for the Direction Central du Renseignement Intrieur -- France's top intelligence agency -- were accused of censorship after threatening to arrest and charge a Wikipedia volunteer.

The hubbub originated with an article that contains classified military secrets, according to operatives, and ergo is a threat to national security. The article, which is still available, describes a military radio relay station in France that is believed to be part of the country's nuclear detection and deterrent network.

In March, the DCRI contacted Wikipedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, about taking down the page. Wikimedia replied that DCRI hadn't provided evidence that the article was a risk, and therefore left it online.

Things got more interesting last week when the DCRI summoned a 30-year-old library curator, who is a Wikipedia volunteer and who has administrator's access to the site. The man reportedly had nothing to do with the page in question but claims he was told to take it down all the same. After declining, he was reportedly told that he would be held in custody and charged for failing to comply.

This sequence of events, rather predictably, resulted in unintended consequences: The vice president of Wikimedia France said that the page in question had between 10 and 60 visitors; as of Sunday, there were "around 10,000 from around the world."

The Wikimedia VP did add, though, that the page would indeed be taken down if DCRI produces the requisite legal papers.

[Source: The Guardian]

Stockholm-based human rights group Civil Rights Defenders has issued a GPS bracelet that will send out an alert should a bracelet's owner ever be kidnapped.

The first five bracelets -- designed to tip off CRD, nearby activists and CRD's social media network -- were handed out last week at "Defenders' Days," a CRD conference. Fifty-five such bracelets will be distributed over the next 18 months.

Read more here:
France Implicated in Wikipedia Censorship Threat

SINGAPORE: Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong said the country's policy on censorship is evolving and moving away from censorship towards one of classification and self-regulation.

Mr Wong was speaking at a recording of Channel NewsAsia's programme "Ask Minister" where he was posed a range of questions from censorship to arts education.

He also said the government should work with a consultative panel made up of Singaporeans from diverse backgrounds and get them to share their views before setting any boundaries.

Mr Wong said: "Rather than to say these are OB markers and don't touch them whether it's politics, race or religion and say 'thou shall not touch it', I think we should move away from that and we should move to a situation where we have a dialogue on what the artist would like to convey even if it's a provocative issue on politics, race or religion and then have a conversation - whether it's with MDA that looks at content regulation or more importantly with audiences so that audiences can understand what they are doing."

Catch more of the discussion with Mr Lawrence Wong on April 9 at 8pm on "Ask Minister", exclusively on Channel NewsAsia.

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Censorship among issues to be discussed in "Ask Minister" programme

Dozens of Sudanese journalists protested for an end to censorship on Monday outside the offices of a respected newspaper whose editor was suspended by national security agents, a protester said.

"No to censorship," said a sign carried by the group of about 70 journalists who gathered outside the Al-Sahafa newspaper offices, the protester said.

Security forces did not intervene.

Al-Nour Ahmed Al-Nour, chief editor of the daily, said last week that agents of the powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) told him he had been suspended -- a rare action against such a prominent journalist.

He said the decision appeared to be linked to a dispute over censorship, which journalists say the NISS continues to impose.

Reporters and press freedom advocates have complained that some Sudanese journalists were banned from writing and that NISS agents regularly block the distribution of papers.

Other newspapers have been suspended from publishing, but Nour is the first chief editor to be removed.

The incident prompted Sudan's government-run press council on Sunday to issue its strongest statement in years.

The council, which licenses newspapers and registers journalists, accused the NISS of interference and called on authorities to disband the press body if it cannot function.

Journalists on Monday also delivered a message to the press council, asking for an end to censorship and for Nour to be reinstated, the protester said.

Read more from the original source:
Sudanese journalists protest against censorship

iDCLOAK's unblock proxy list is specially designed for censorship circumvention and is constantly updated with fresh proxies.

Dallas, Texas (PRWEB) April 07, 2013

We have a full schedule of service releases for 2013, says iDCLOAKs Director of Marketing, Gill-Chris Welles, and the free proxy servers list is an important first. For one, it is a calling card for our companys entrance into the existing proxy market so those who already use proxies know we are here and that we are a serious player. Perhaps even more important is that the free list is helping us raise public awareness on the advantages of using a proxy as a buffer for your internet privacy were saying Never used a proxy before? Well, here, have a try. And internet censorship circumvention is of course going to be the main reason people do try proxies out.

The iDCLOAK proxy database contains some 2,500 open proxies from over 70 countries and is managed by an online proxy checker bot which verifies that proxies are live and provides important data about the proxy to the user. The selection menus embedded in the list allow users to filter the proxy database according to specific preferences, such as: country, port, proxy protocol and even speed or level of anonymity.

We want users to move away from the idea that a proxy is a single-state service it neednt be so fixed in its operations. Regular unblock proxy sites offer very little choice regarding performance or IP location you just punch in a URL and see what happens. To bypass censors successfully at acceptable speeds you need to know where you are routing your connection to and what speeds the proxy is running at. Our proxy list gives you that data up front and lets you search for proxies according to a whole range of specific criteria you set. Later this year we are releasing our Smart VPN, a much more advanced cross-platform product that will streamline the proxy bypassing process while providing even more choice than our list offers now. For users to get the most out of the iDCLOAK Smart VPN, we need to raise consumer expectations of circumvention technologies. The iDCLOAK proxy list is doing just that.

The iDCLOAK Smart VPN software-based proxy is due for release in the coming months. For those interested in learning about forthcoming products, or looking for an education in web anonymity, security or internet censorship circumvention, visit http://www.idcloak.com.

Gill-Chris Welles idcloak Technologies Inc. 7862109230 Email Information

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iDCLOAK Technologies Releases a Proxy Servers List Designed Specifically for Web Censorship Circumvention

With over 500 million YouTube views, TED Talks have attracted guest speakers such as Bill Gates, Richard Dawkins and Julian Assange and in the process, made conferences cool again.

But in recent weeks TED Talks with their mantra - ideas worth sharing - have been accused of censorship after two British speakers had their talks removed from TEDs official website.

The row involves two British speakers, the journalist and author Graham Hancock and Cambridge and Harvard University lecturer Rupert Sheldrake. Both speakers have been deemed as provocative amid accusations of pseudoscience at lectures they gave at a TEDx talk a franchised spin-off of the main TED Talk brand. Hancock describes a war on consciousness that prevents the world from gaining a higher state of awareness through shamanic principles and psychoactives like the South American potion, ayahuasca.

Rupert Sheldrake, a biochemist gave a speech which was loosely based on his book, The Science Delusion in which he refutes enduring dogmas which he claims are holding back legitimate scientific enquiry.

Both speakers who spoke at the TEDx conference in east London last month had their speeches pulled from its YouTube channel. After complaints from Sheldrake and Hancock and many TED viewers, their videos were reinstalled, but not on the main website in the naughty corner as Mr Hancock described it.

Hancock and Sheldrake have also called for the anonymous science board which advises TED on the legitimacy of speakers, to be revealed something which TED is refusing to do, citing they are unpaid volunteers.

At the talks, speakers are given 18 minutes to present their ideas, which range from a mixture of science and culture through to storytelling.

But in recent months, a series of controversies dogged the not-for-profit organisation and whose acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, leading many to question the integrity of the organisation which charges audiences several thousands of pounds to watch a speech, yet pays its speakers nothing. In 2009, TED decided to license its brand allowing anyone, around the world to stage TEDx events.

Last week in California, officials withdrew the license awarded to organisers of TEDx West Hollywood. Organisers said the conference theme who were talking about the reality of ESP, was pseudoscience.

Graham Hancock, said: I think it comes down to the management of popular culture, rather than leaving people to make up their own minds.

Read the rest here:
TED conference censorship row

The New York Times reports that Russia has begun censoring the Internet inside its borders, acting on a law that was passed back in November.

The intention of the censorship act is to prevent easy access to information that could potentially harm children or that contravenes the law.

Facebook, for example, was asked by Russia's regulators to take down a page that they were concerned promoted suicide. The social network had until Sunday to comply, and did so, having decided that the page was not in the interest of general public health.

Twitter is also said to have complied with some requests to block local access to some posts.

Critics of the law say the censorship mechanisms are easy to abuse, and that the government could use them to oppose dissent.

Microsoft recently reported government requests for user data, and the figures indicated monitoring of activists in Russia.

China, well known for aggressive Internet censorship, was in the news recently when an analysis revealed the amazing speed of Chinese human censors for the first time.

[Image: Flickr user Ed Yourdon]

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Russia Internet Censorship Begins

BP hasnt finished watching the ThaiPBS series on the monarchy so havent got around to blogging about it yet, but see that tonight at the FCCT there is an event on this subject. Below is the blurb:

Media Censorship and Self Censorship: What Is the Role of Thailands Public Broadcasters? A panel discussion

8pm, Thursday March 28, 2013

(Please see pricing and reservation procedure below)

First it was a soap opera Nua Mek 2 on Thailands channel 3 that was yanked off the air after its 9th episode (there were 12 in all), as was quoted in the press the content of the show had violated the Broadcast and Telecommunications Operations Act. In particular it was Section 37 which bars broadcast content that seeks to overthrow the constitutional monarchy, threatens national security or morality, constitutes profanity or harms peoples mental or physical health. Social media buzzed with speculation to political interference while audiences were left with a real life cliff hanger.

Just a few months, later the popular Thai talk show Tob Jote Prathet Thai or roughly translated to Answering Thailands Issues on Thai PBS held a 5 episode week long discussion about the role of the constitutional monarchy in Thailand. Featuring several well known figures, it was heralded as a breakthrough for open discussion about a topic that is seen as the most sensitive issue in the Kingdom. When Thai PBS pulled the 5th installment of the program, which it later aired, more drama ensued with the police now combing the series for any lese majeste content. Small protests took place outside of Thai PBS and underscore just what a flashpoint continues to be.

Join us for a panel who will discuss the role of Thai pubic broadcasters and whether their mission is to serve the public by providing factual information and room for debate, upholding the prevailing ideology of the country and its laws, or a combination of the two.

On the panel are:

Supinya Klangnarong, a Thai media rights advocate who is also on Thailands National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC). The Commission oversees all public and private media outlets.

Vornai Vanijaka, a print and TV social and political commentator

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FCCT Event tonight : Media Censorship and Self Censorship : What Is the Role of Thailand’s Public Broadcasters?

Washington Post fights censorship accusations

By: RTAmerica

Continued here:
Washington Post fights censorship accusations - Video