Category Archives: Censorship

Mute but moving

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Every day, for as long as I can remember, there’s been a lone Falun Gong demonstrator outside the Chinese Embassy in Portland Place. Here is this morning’s protestor. It’s an impressive, quiet display — all the more so when you see someone sitting motionless in the freezing cold for hours on end. Meanwhile virtually every UK university and FTSE company is sending people to China, touting for business like tarts on the road from Milan airport. And of course Google China (and Yahoo and MSN) block access to search results for ‘Falun Gong’.

Jailed for a Blogpost

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From TCS Daily…

In a cramped jail cell in Alexandria, Egypt, sits a soft-spoken 22-year-old student. Kareem Amer was remanded to over a month in prison for allegedly “defaming the President of Egypt” and “highlighting inappropriate aspects that harm the reputation of Egypt.” Where did Amer commit these supposed felonies? On his weblog…

Blogging and freedom

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This morning’s Observer column…

What do these countries have in common: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam?

All are listed by the human-rights organisation Reporters sans Frontieres as having governments that seek to curtail freedom of expression on the internet. Some are the usual suspects, but it’s interesting to see cuddly Socialist Cuba keeping up with the massed goons of Burma, China and North Korea.

The two ‘stans’ are also coming along nicely, as their oil wealth increases, and of course Iran remains a staunch opponent of internet freedoms – or any freedoms at all.

Despite these efforts, Farsi has made it into the top 10 languages on the net, a reflection of an extraordinary phenomenon: the way Iranians, especially women, use the net to combat government control of conventional media. It seems to date from 2001, when hardliners shut down more than 100 newspapers and magazines and detained writers…

Can’t censor the internet? Tell that to your compliant ISP

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This morning’s Observer column…

Dr Godfrey sued for defamation and, in 1997, won. Demon appealed but then unexpectedly decided to settle, paying Godfrey damages and costs. As a result, a chilling legal precedent was set which essentially undermines Gilmore’s blithe confidence in the ability of the net to overcome censorship. Godfrey v. Demon Internet established the principle that if you complain to an ISP about something hosted on its servers and the ISP does nothing about it, it can be held liable in subsequent proceedings.

Every since then, censoring the web has been child’s play, at least in the UK and Europe. Here’s how it works. If you don’t like something someone says about you on a website, get a lawyer to write a ‘notice and takedown’ (snotty, in other words) letter to the ISP that hosts the site. Seven times out of 10, the ISP will pull the plug on the site without further ado – and certainly without considering whether your complaint has any merit.

You think I jest?

The Constitution’s the boss

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From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

A federal judge in Detroit on Thursday struck down the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, calling it unconstitutional and an illegal abuse of presidential power. In a 43-page opinion, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor made quick work of the Bush administration’s “it’s classified” defense, pointing out that the program is not beyond judicial scrutiny. “The Presidential Oath of Office is set forth in the Constitution and requires him to swear or affirm that he ‘will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ ” Taylor wrote. “The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself. We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all ‘inherent powers’ must derive from that Constitution.”

Yes, Ma’am. The Feds are appealing, of course. But an interesting question now looms, namely the legal liability of the phone and internet companies that have been doing the government’s dirty work for it if a higher court rules that it was illegal all along.

China now blocks main Google site

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I missed this BBC NEWS report (dated June 7), and only picked it up when reading Owen’s Blog…

Chinese authorities have blocked most domestic users from the main Google.com search engine, a media watchdog said.

Internet users in major Chinese cities faced difficulties accessing Google’s international site in the past week, Reporters Without Borders said.

But Google.cn, the controversial Chinese language version launched in January, has not been affected.

The site blocks politically sensitive material to comply with government censorship rules.

“It was only to be expected that Google.com would be gradually sidelined after the censored version was launched in January,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

“Google has just definitively joined the club of Western companies that comply with online censorship in China,” the organisation said…

It was only a matter of time, of course. But it makes the Google boys look even more naive than I had thought.

Ruling Backs Internet-Phone Wiretapping

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From this morning’s New York Times…

WASHINGTON, June 9 (Bloomberg News) — Comcast, Vonage and other companies that provide telecommunications services over the Internet must allow wiretapping of phone calls by law enforcement officials, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.

In a 2-to-1 decision, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a Federal Communications Commission directive treating such companies the same as conventional phone companies for law enforcement purposes. Comcast and other cable companies offer Internet service over their networks, and Vonage is the biggest provider of Web-based phone service…

Yes, but what will they do about Skype, which is a P2P system?

Google having doubts about China?

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Hmmm… From Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Has Google begun recalibrating its Evil Scale? If it hasn’t yet, it certainly seems to be considering it. Addressing reporters in Washington yesterday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted that the company has compromised its principles by acceding to Chinese censorship demands and hinted that Google could adjust its stance in the country in the future. “We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference,” Brin said. “Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense. It’s perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say, ‘Look, we’re going to stand by the principle against censorship and we won’t actually operate there.’ That’s an alternate path. It’s not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing.”

Quite a change, as GMSV observes, from CEO Schmidt’s confident tone when the original capitulation was announced. “We believe that the decision that we made to follow the law in China was absolutely the right one,” he said at the time. “From our perspective, we must comply with the local law, and indeed, we have all made commitments to the government that we will absolutely follow Chinese law.”

It gets worse

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From GMSV…

Now comes word that the Justice Department has told Google, Microsoft and other major Net companies that it wants them to keep records of every Web page their users visit for two years, a polite request now, maybe a law later. Search sites, portals and ISPs are sweating, not wanting to side with the pedophiles and terrorists but not wanting to appear to bend over so readily that their customers scream. “Child pornography is disgusting and illegal,” said Steve Langdon, a spokesman for Google. But he said any proposals related to users’ data “require careful review and must balance the legitimate interests of individual users, law enforcement agencies and Internet companies.”

Current regulations require companies to preserve data that is the subject of specific criminal investigations for up to 180 days while law enforcement collects evidence that could support a warrant or subpoena. “This is a radical departure from current practices,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told the Mercury News. “We’ve opposed it because we think it creates an unnecessary risk to privacy and security of Internet users.” And that risk is only one of the problems. Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, said requiring companies to keep such data could end up costing billions of dollars, raising the price of Net access. “The Department of Justice has yet to tell us what they want us to store.”‘ McClure said. “If they decide they want us to store everything, there isn’t a storage facility in the U.S. large enough to store that.”