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Despite North Koreas increased efforts to prevent outside information from entering the country, international activists say technology and market forces will eventually overcome state censorship.

North Korea is one of the most isolated nations in the world, where foreign media is prohibited and most people don't have access to the Internet. The repressive state has even executed citizens for distributing media from South Korea, according to the Transitional Justice Working Group that documents human rights abuses in North Korea.

Familiar pattern

Still it is following a pattern similar to other authoritarian regimes that view knowledge as power and have tried to limit and control access to outside information. This according to leaders from Cuban and Myanmar (or Burmese) independent organizations working to evade authoritarian censorship and outside information restrictions in their own countries, who were recently in Seoul to share their experiences and strategies with Korean counterparts.

I believe that the increasing Internet penetration is going to be inevitable. Eventually the government will need this and needs this for its own development, said Rafeal Duval with the independent news organization Cubanet.

In Cuba, as in North Korea, growing demand for foreign movies and television dramas, not political news, has made smuggling in outside information an increasingly profitable venture.

Using a variety of USB drives, Micro SD cards and DVD discs, Cubanet distributes through the black market a weekly compilation of video content, audio podcasts and entire webpages known as El Paquete for its growing list of customers in Cuba.

Duval said Cuban authorities charged with preventing the influx of foreign media are eventually co-opted by being bought off and often becoming users themselves.

Theyre going to realize the impossibility of a ban because of corruption, he said.

Another Cuban project called Apretaste targeted the countrys elites, the estimated 25 percent of Cubans who have access to email. Apretaste works as a proxy search engine in which volunteers in places like Florida email results to over 100,000 Cuban inquiries each month.

Right now we are giving to the people in Cuba something that they really need. We are giving them a window to see you outside the island, said Salvi Pascual who founded Apretaste.

Prior to democratic reforms that began in Myanmar in 2011, the military government highly censored the Internet. But the porous border with Thailand and the proliferation of satellite TV receivers in the country made it easier for exile opposition groups to penetrate the countrys information blockade.

Emerging black market

The North Korean economy has been steadily growing in recent years despite increased international sanctions imposed on Pyongyang for its continued nuclear and ballistic missiles tests. In the last year, the countrys gross domestic product rose 3.9 percent, driven in part by the exports of coal and other minerals, according to Bank of Korea in Seoul.

However an emerging private market that is tolerated but not sanctioned by the communist state is also driving economic growth. A survey by the Beyond Parallel project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC says most North Koreans now earn 75 percent of their household income from the black market. The Illicit export of North Korean seafood, shoes, cigarettes and cooking oil has given people new purchasing power to bring in outside information and technology.

The number of households with TVs and DVD players in North Korea has grown to the point of being ubiquitous said Nat Kretchun, Deputy Director of the Open Technology Fund, a group that promotes internet freedom and is funded by the U.S. government through the Voice of Americas sister organization Radio Free Asia.

And the number of legal North Korean cell phones users has also been growing in recent years. Initially many of these domestic phones were used to transfer unsanctioned media and information files but recent updates to the phones operating system installed inhibiting censorship and surveillance software.

It effectively blocks all unsanctioned files from being used on domestic phones, said Kretchun.

However for every measure taken by authoritarian governments to block outside information, activists are developing technological counter measures.

That said North Korean defector Kim Seung-chul, who founded North Korea Reform Radio, which broadcasts into the North, expressed frustration that the South Korean government seems to provide less funding to groups working to penetrate the Norths closed information environment than do these Cuban and Myanmar exiles groups.

The South Korean government, conservatives, veterans, and famous people have a lot of money but they do not use the money for this. They get angry about North Koreas situation, but they do not act, said Kim.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.

Continued here:
Cuban Activists Say North Korea Fighting Losing Censorship Battle - Voice of America

A controversial op-ed published in the New York Times earlier this month argued that it was reasonable for universities to ban lectures by speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos on the grounds that certain speech can constitute violence. Author Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, sought to provide substantive weight to a refrain used increasingly by liberal campus activists in their attempts to censor controversial speakers, most of whom happen to be right-of-center.

In that respect, her op-ed was a welcome contribution to the discussion, since these activists rarely appear capable of offering substantive defenses of this contention, which is key to their pleas for censorship.

But if Barrett's argument is the best their side has, and given her credentials I imagine that's the case, they're still in trouble.

In her op-ed, Barrett did concede that "offensiveness is not bad for your body and brain."

"In contrast," she asserted, "long stretches of simmering stress" can be "bad for your nervous system."

If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that's the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That's also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it.

Barrett concluded, "That's why it's reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hate monger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school." Yiannopoulos, per her assessment, "is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse."

"There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering," she wrote.

But isn't that a different argument? Is Yiannopoulos objectionable because he's not offering debate or because he creates "long stretches of simmering stress"? And how does one hour of Yiannopoulos' speech on one night of the school year reasonably create such a "long stretch of simmering stress"?

Barrett compares Yiannopoulos to Charles Murray writing, "On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it's only offensive. It is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade."

But where is that line drawn, and who gets to draw it?

There are stark differences between the two men in question, but the same arguments about speech are made to block more scholarly speakers such as Ben Shapiro who don't shy from communicating with a bolder style, but do so with the intention of facilitating a productive conversation. (That, for the record, is why I've argued elevating Yiannopoulos, a non-conservative who is perceived as one, confounds the larger debate about campus censorship.)

Notably, Yiannopoulos claims to have the same intentions of "offering debate" as Murray and Shapiro. Barrett can argue that's insincere or inaccurate, but his allies, and some of his detractors, make reasonable arguments otherwise.

What is the "scientific" explanation as to why his speech is "part of a campaign of abuse"? Many would (wrongfully) argue the exact same is true of Murray's speech. Unless Barrett can supply convincing answers to these questions, proving exactly what words cross the line into psychologically-violent territory, her attempt to draw objective parameters is still just as subjective as the ones one made by protesters of Murray's lectures, with whom she disagrees.

If Barrett could objectively prove how one hour of speech creates "a culture of constant, casual brutality," and why we should trust the arbiters of that definition, her argument would be more persuasive. In the meantime, students should still consider themselves psychologically capable of tolerating hour-long intervals of offensive speech, "noxious" as it may be, and attend a few lectures when they return to school in the fall.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

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Another failed argument for campus censorship - Washington Examiner

Beijing said in January it would restrict virtual private networks, or VPNs, and this month reportedly told the three big telecoms companies to block individuals' access to them by early next year.

China's regulator defended the crackdown on Tuesday, saying recent measures were part of an ongoing campaign aimed at "cleaning and standardizing" access to the internet.

"Our restrictions target service providers without licenses or operating illegally," said Zhang Feng, spokesman for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, at a press conference.

"Law-abiding individuals and businesses won't be affected," he said.

Related: WhatsApp is being targeted by China's censors, experts say

China's internet is tightly controlled by censors, who block access to services such as Google (GOOGL, Tech30), Facebook (FB, Tech30) and even the New York Times. To get around the firewall, many people use VPNs, which use encryption to disguise internet traffic.

Authorities are cracking down on local Chinese companies offering VPN services without registering properly with the authorities, said Charlie Smith of GreatFire.org, a group that monitors internet censorship in the country.

"These companies largely offer cheap access to VPNs, so in that regard, Chinese are losing an affordable way to access internet freedom," Smith said.

The ministry's comments followed widespread reports of dozens of popular China-based VPNs being shut down, and the country's largest internet provider telling corporate customers that VPNs can only be used to connect to a company's overseas headquarters.

Related: Apple yanks New York Times apps in China

The moves mean it will become increasingly difficult to find a working VPN. Soon, only technically savvy people will be able to get around China's Great Firewall, says Maya Wang, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch.

"All this means the difficulty of getting access to an uncensored, unmonitored internet is ever increasing," she said.

Beijing acknowledges, however, that China can't completely get rid of VPNs -- certainly not for businesses.

Related: China fortifies Great Firewall with crackdown on VPNs

"We have noticed the need for direct international connections by foreign trade companies and international businesses. They can apply for such services with approved providers," Zhang said.

"This is one of the rare instances when the authorities admit to the necessity of VPNs," said Smith.

The U.S. views China's censorship as a barrier to trade, arguing in an annual report that China's "extensive blocking of legitimate websites" imposes significant costs on suppliers and users of services and products.

"U.S. industry research has calculated that up to 3,000 sites in total are blocked, affecting billions of dollars in business, including communications, networking, news and other sites," according to the report published by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

China has tightened internet censorship across the board ahead of 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.

-- CNN's Steven Jiang contributed to this report.

CNNMoney (Hong Kong) First published July 25, 2017: 8:15 AM ET

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China says VPN crackdown aimed at 'cleaning' the internet - CNNMoney