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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

Ari Shaffirs new two-part special Double Negative hit Netflix today. Presented in two episodes, Children and Adulthood, the special is a sprawling look at where the comedian is at in life right now. Hes getting older, exploring his sexuality, and dealing with pressure from family and friends, all in front of the backdrop of a world that is kind of fucked. He breaks down the overarching message of the special like this: One side is what Im against, the other side is what Im for in this life Ive chosen. Ari and I had an in-depth chat about the development of the material, the business side of shooting your own special, and the difficult dance between comedy purism and Comedy Centrals censorship.

Your new special Double Negative is divided into two parts: Children and Adulthood. What led to you dividing this release into two separate sections?

Generally I try to have some kind of through line in my specials. Otherwise, I find it just becomes sort of a collection of bits, which is fine, but its sort of more like a Van Halen album than awhat is it, Sea Change by Beck?

Right.

Yeah, thats a breakup album. Theres a reason theyre all together. If you add another song in thereits like, Im going to save this one for myself because it doesnt fit. So I just need a through line, even if its just in my head. With this one I couldnt really center on a through line. The bits were sort of everywhere, unlinked. I had all this stuff on children and then I had all this other stuff that wasnt quite enough for a special. At the time, I was listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins because me and Big Jay (Oakerson) saw them at Rock on the Range in Columbus a few years before. It was so bad. It was just Billy Corgan. He had people that looked like the regular band and he played all of his old songs at double speed just to get through them. He just did it for the money. He walked half the crowd. I dont even know if I stayed for the whole thing. I was mad at him for a couple of years. Then I was like, Well, let me remember what I liked about them. So I started listening to the old albums: Gish, Siamese Dream, and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. That one is such a good album. I listened to it over and over again. As I was listening to it I thought, I could apply this to my special and have like a double album.

Then I started thinking about how to break this down in a twofer kind of way. One is all about children because thats the pressure Im getting from my family a little bit and my friends, who are like, Come on, man. Why arent you having a kid yet? Im getting more and more in my thoughts about why I dont want that. Theyre like, Why? Well, let me tell you why. The screaming and you being tired all the time is a negative. Plus, this positive thing that Im going through, you cant do if you have a wife and kids. You cant go to Thailand for two weeks and explore your homosexuality. Youre not going to have STD call drama with random girls. This is a life youve given up. Some of its good, some of its bad. It really started to form in my head that way. One side is what Im against, the other side is what Im for in this life Ive chosen.

Once the segments started to become clear in your head, how did you structure them for the stage, being that its essentially two shows worth of material?

I really worked it. I took it to Edinburgh. I started taking intermissions at the ones I did in Scandinavia. I wanted to see what it felt like to close on each one. Ive seen people do this thing when theyre getting ready for their late night sets where they do their five that theyre going to do for late night and then they keep going and do the rest of their 15-minute set. But you dont know what it feels like to close on your closer joke. So I was doing that. I would flip flop nights, doing adulthood first or children first and then take an intermission. It was going well, but then I talked to (Joe) Rogan about it and he said, Thats all well and good, but thats a Scandinavian crowd who might be used to that stuff. You try to do that in America and theyre going to revolt. Youve got to do it in America before you tape the special. So I started running it like that with little intermissions. I told the clubs to book me a 10 or 15-minute opener and then I ran an hour-and-a-half to an hour-and-45 until I felt like I had two strong closers and two completely free-standing, yet together, specials.

How much did the material change once you brought it back to the States?

It needed more jokes in there for sure. Edinburgh audiences are hoity-toity smart people who are willing to see things like that. I learned that the attention span here is not quite as long and I needed to throw some more tags in there. Theres also other things, like abortion material. Out there it didnt play very well. The attitude here that Ive found in people who are going to comedy clubs is that theyre for a womans right to choose, but then they also think something is wrong with you if youre doing it. You know what its like: I heard she had four abortions. Oh, what?! In the UK and Scandinavia its more just like a procedure if you have to get one, just get one, no big deal. So those jokes didnt hit as hard there, but when I got back here people were more shocked by them.

Where did you record these two sets?

Cap City.

Any reason in particular that you chose Austin?

I have a list of all of my favorite clubs and I want to shoot at all of them. My CD, my first release, was at the Comedy Works in Denver, one of the best clubs in the country. Then I went back to the original room at The Comedy Store, which is probably my favorite room. Then Cap City.

The two sections of Double Negative have slight variations in aesthetic, plus a wardrobe change.

I had to decide how I was going to shoot it. I didnt want two separate locations because I didnt want two separate specials. I wanted it more like a front side and back side. Chappelles special was two separate specials recorded years apart. I dont know why they put those together, to be honest. But theres a George Carlin album FM & AM. It was right after he became dirty and he was exploring his clean side and his dirty side. He had one clean album and one dirty album, like two sides of the coin. So I decided to do it at the same location, but make it a little different. Change the wardrobe, change the color scheme of the set.

This is your first time working with Netflix, which means you probably had to front the whole production and then shop it and sell it, right?

Yeah, it was a risk for sure. I was at the point where I didnt want tothe last special I did I got a call about two weeks before I shot. I was in Appleton, Wisconsin. I try to go up at really shitty clubs for two or three weeks beforehand. Sometimes I dont even tell people Im going, no promoting it at all. Ill just be like, Give me the minimum you would give somebody with no draw. Im not going to tell anybody Im here. I just want to get this stuff real sharp in front of people who dont know me.

So anyway, I was doing that in Appleton, which is actually a really good room, and I get this call saying, Hey, your closer that youre planning on doingwe cant show it. At first they were like, We have notes. I was like, I dont want notes. I dont want them. Keep them to yourself. If you want to cut stuff, cut stuff. They were like, Youre going to need to hear this. We cant show your whole closer. I was like, Why? They said it was just an S&P rule. It was some rule about how you cant describe the smell of a vagina or something like that. I had already worked on it the way I wanted to, so I had to figure out what I was going to close with. When they told me that, right then I thought, I cant ever let you have control over what I do again. As long as I have enough money where Im not destitute, Ive got to do it myself with no notes. Its my special, not anyone elses.

So I talked to my agent and manager and told them what I wanted to do and they said, You might lose a lot of money. I was like, Im willing to. I live like a fucking pauper. So I saved up enough money. This is why I saved up money not so I could take a vacation, but so I can do this, build my special the way I want. I figured if it didnt work I could make $10,000 of it back in iTunes sales and then, lesson learned, I cant do that anymore. But I did sell it. So now this is the way Im always going to do it. Get out of my way, let me do what I want, and then Ill show you what I have. Its like a painter or an artist. They just say, Heres my work.

I remember when Paid Regular came out on Comedy Central it was advertised as uncensored. It sucks to hear the backstory of you having to drop your closer. Your special was censored before it was even finished.

Its not the way comics are supposed to do things. Its like the show I did, This Is Not Happening. The first day we had a meeting where we had to go over the stories with the comics. I remember raising my hand in the meeting and being like, Well, we could go over their stuff with them or we could trust professional comedians to be prepared on their own when theyre doing comedy. They all kind of laughed. I was like, Its not funny. Let them do what they want. We shouldnt be giving them any notes. Im a comedian and I dont want to give them notes. Anyone else who is not doing it should never tell anyone. Get out of peoples way and let them be who they are. If they make a mistake, fine, thats on them.

I saw that you were doing an Off-JFL thing in Montreal. They have your show listed as Ari Shaffirs Renamed Storytelling Show. I assume that Comedy Central is keeping the rights to This Is Not Happening as they are bringing Roy (Wood Jr.) in. But what are your plans to continue doing the show the way you created it? Will you be taking it back to stages and

Ive always done it on stages. I never really stopped doing it throughout the year. I do it at the Bell House, different spots, festivals. Its like, whatever, man. Theyre not going to stop me from being a comic. Its like, fine, do whatever you feel that you have to, but Im going to keep going.

What are your plans once the special drops? Are you going to beef up touring or are there any other big projects in the works?

Im trying to build my next hour. Im trying to do it all about Judaism. Im building that slowly. Im writing stuff. I want to do a travel book. I want to do a roast battle in the Belly Room. You know, just fun stuff. I want to be home for a while. Im not going to start touring again until December or January. I want to build my new hour here in the city.

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Ari Shaffir Moves from Censorship to Creative Control with 'Double Negative' - Splitsider

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos poses on a lorry in Bangalore.

Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images

Among big American tech companies, the race for India is on. With 355 million internet users (and rapidly growing) up for grabs, its no surprise that firms like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon are investing billions of dollars to make inroads in the worlds largest democracy.

But as they do, theyre running up against a particular conundrum: how to cater to the countrys cosmopolitan consumers without offending its more conservative classes, including the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a surprising number of cases, companies are erring on the side of censorshipfor instance, by blocking images of dead cows and ads for anti-nationalist home goods.

Indias approach to internet governance isnt in the same league as the heavy-handed censorship of neighbor and rival power China though, which has historically blocked popular websites including Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook through its Great Firewall. India represents a softer form of sanitization. By law, the nation offers a constitutional protection of free speech and limits the governments ability to crack down on online content. But that doesnt mean the internet has become a free-for-all. For example, India frequently leads the world in government requests to Facebook for account data and for content removal (mostly related to local laws against anti-religious or hate speech). Many companies also choose to pre-emptively clean up content to appease the government and avoid backlash from of Indias culturally conservative classes.

As noted in a post by the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi on Legally India, the practice of self-censorship is particularly widespread among international video streaming services. The authors suggest that the platforms may be trying to find their place in the Indian market without drawing attention for the wrong reasons.

This May, Netflix released a censored form of the Hindi dramedy Angry Indian Goddessesfor viewers in India, even though it made an uncensored cut available for foreign audiences in April. According to Indian digital news site MediaNama, it seems that the streaming service released the version of the filmwhich covers stigmatized issues like homosexuality, rape, and castethat had been approved for theatrical release by the Indias Central Board of Film Certification. But that body doesnt have jurisdiction over online content from platforms like Netflix and recently implied it has no intention of regulating online content in the foreseeable future.

Instead, it appears Netflixs decision was a case of self-censorship. According to the films production company and director, the American company requested the edited version of the movie first, apparently preferring to stream the version that cut references to the Indian government, blurred an image of an Indian goddess, and cut out dialogue referring to an Indian figure, the holy Hindu bovine cow, and, for unknown reasons, the words guitar and lunch.

Business is Business. They would rather censor stuff and stay on the good graces of the government of India than appease users and risk controversy, wrote one Reddit user in a discussion about the streaming services seemingly arbitrary censorship decisions in the country.

After getting complaints from confused India-based viewers, Netflix released an uncut version of the movie in June.

Amazon Prime Video also routinely eliminates nudity and other inappropriate content from its vast streaming catalog. Since its 2016 launch in India, many TV shows and films available in the region have been edited to the point where plots elude human comprehension. Among others, Amazon heavily cut an episode of Jeremy Clarksons car show The Grand Tourthat featured the host driving a car out of animal carcasses. Despite complaints, Amazon defended the move to Mashable India, saying it wanted to "keep Indian cultural sensitivities in mind. Considering the recent episodes of violence allegedly tied to beef consumption, Amazon may have thought it incendiary to show the dead body of an animal so highly revered in Hindu circles.

Amazon has also had to mind its online merchandise. The everything store came under fire in January for selling doormats with the Indian national flag design. (In India and other South Asian countries, feet on such a symbol would be considered an insult.) Upon learning of the product, Indias Foreign Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted, Amazon must tender unconditional apology. They must withdraw all products insulting our national flag immediately. In a subsequent tweet, she threatened to withhold and rescind visas from Amazon employees if action was not taken quickly. The company swiftly complied.

Tinder, too, hasnt been immune. The hookup app took criticism earlier this year after releasing a seemingly tone-deaf video ad for potential Indian users, which featured a conservative mother surprisingly approve of her daughters date, saying, From my side, there is a right swipe for this."

Some criticized what they saw as a regressive message at odds with the apps reputation for facilitating casual sex. Others pointed out how not OK their parents would be with them meeting up with strangers in a culture where open dating has traditionally been taboo.

If ma knew her daughter is on a hang-and-maybe-bang app, shed kick me outta the house, not sweetly send me off to drunk-make out with a rando, one user told BuzzFeed India.

When Tinder India CEO Taru Kapoor was asked about the video by Huffington Post India, she admitted the ad might not have been perfectly executed. But, she said, it was part of a larger effort the company would continue to make to show that online dating could appeal to a broad range of Indian users. Although differing from Amazon Prime Video and Netflixs self-censorship, the advertisement tied into a broader trend of appealing to more conservative audiences.

As huge profit margins and success in the Indian markets are already demonstrating, that may not be an unwise business decision.

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American tech firms are preemptively censoring content in India. - Slate Magazine (blog)