Posts tagged censorship
Without advanced technology, authoritarian regimes would not be able to spy on their citizens. Reporters Without Borders has for the first time compiled a list of five “Corporate Enemies of the Internet,” five private sector companies that it regards as “digital era mercenaries” because they sell products that are used by authoritarian governments to commit violations of human rights and freedom of information. They are Gamma, Trovicor, Hacking Team, Amesys and Blue Coat…
…Their products have been or are being used to commit violations of human rights and freedom of information. If these companies decided to sell to authoritarian regimes, they must have known that their products could be used to spy on journalists, dissidents and netizens. If their digital surveillance products were sold to an authoritarian regime by an intermediary without their knowledge, their failure to keep track of the exports of their own software means they did not care if their technology was misused and did not care about the vulnerability of those who defend human rights.
Reporters Without Borders, Era of the Digital Mercenaries.
Today is World Day Against Cyber-Censorship and for it, Reporters Without Borders is focusing on the five countries and five companies it believes are the worst in the world when it comes to censorship and surveillance.
A must read.
[Iran] is developing “intelligent software” that aims to manipulate, rather than fully control, citizens’ access to social networks. Instead of blocking Facebook, or Twitter, or even Google, the regime… will allow controlled access to those services. As Iranian police chief Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam put it to Iranian local media, cheerfully: “Smart control of social networks will not only avoid their disadvantages, but will also allow people to benefit from their useful aspects.”…
…[T]he “intelligent software” announcement is itself revealing: It suggests the increasing normalization of censorship — and, more specifically, the increasing normalization of strategic censorship.
This is the highly effective Chinese model put to use by another regime: Block content if you must, but monitor content first of all. Allow your citizens to indict themselves with the freedom — “freedom” — you give them. And that is, as a strategy, very likely the future of repression — one in which access to the web won’t just be the black-and-white matter of blocked vs. not , but rather something more insidious: curtailing Internet freedom by the very illusion of granting it. As Iran’s Moghadam noted, “Smart control of social networks is better than filtering them completely.” What’s scary is that he’s probably right.
Megan Garber, The Atlantic. The Age of Surgical Censorship.
Meantime, Iran has cut off access to most Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) that its citizens use to get around government filters.
In announcing the move, Ramezanali Sobhani-Fard, head of parliament’s information and communications technology committee, told the Mehr news agency, “Within the last few days illegal VPN ports in the country have been blocked. Only legal and registered VPNs can from now on be used,” according to Reuters.
Iran is reportedly in the process of creating a “Halal” Internet, or a countrywide intranet, that is closed off from the rest of the Web.
Chinese internet expert and Tea Leaf Nation founder David Wertime tells Harvard’s Berkman Center about China’s internet peculiarities.
From Nieman Lab’s summary:
In what ways is the Chinese Internet a better source for grassroots Chinese sentiment than traditional quotes and sources? In what ways is it worse? More broadly, what best practices can and should journalists use when mining social media for sentiment?
FJP: For more from us on China, you may want to see this post, and this one too.
In Vietnam, 17 bloggers and activists will stand trial [today]. This trial will be the largest of its kind in Vietnam—14 of the defendants will appear at once. They have been charged under Article 79 (“activities aimed at overthrowing the people’s government”) of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The allegations include: attending workshops on digital security; writing and linking to blog posts that are critical of the Communism Vietnamese government; calling for peaceful protests and political pluralism; and association with the Vietnam Reform Party (Viet Tan). If convicted, the defendants could face sentences ranging from five years in prison to capital punishment. Three of the accused activists—Nguyen Xuan Kim, Thai Van Tu, and Le Sy—have fled the country and the Ministry of Public Security has issued a warrant for their arrest.
2012 was a year of crackdowns on free expression in Vietnam, including the introduction of new censorship laws. But just as important as the new regulations was the ongoing harassment, intimidation, and detainment of bloggers who had spoken out against the Communist regime. Dozens of social activists were arrested, some of whom received harsh prison sentences, and many of whom have been detained for over a year without trail. In the summer, the mother of imprisoned Vietnamese blogger Ta Phong Tan died after setting herself on fire to protest her daughter’s detention on charges spreading anti-state propaganda.
China to Businesses: You Will Help us Censor the Internet
Via the New York Times:
As the Chinese cyberpolice stiffened controls on information before the Communist Party leadership transition taking place this week, some companies in Beijing and nearby cities received orders to aid the cause.
Starting earlier this year, Web police units directed the companies, which included joint ventures involving American corporations, to buy and install hardware to log the traffic of hundreds or thousands of computers, block selected Web sites, and connect with local police servers, according to industry executives and official directives obtained by The New York Times. Companies faced the threat of fines and suspended Internet service if they did not comply by prescribed deadlines.
The initiative was one in a range of shadowy tactics authorities deployed in the months leading up to the 18th Party Congress, which is scheduled to end on Wednesday, in an escalating campaign against information deemed threatening to party rule. The effort, while spottily executed, was alarming enough to spur one foreign industry association to lodge a complaint with the government. Several foreign companies quietly resisted the orders, which posed risks to communications and trade secrets that they take pains to secure.
The Times article notes one local company was told it would be fined approximately $2,400 and lose Internet access for six months if it did not install the required hardware and software.
China Blocks Google
China’s blocked pretty much all of Google as its 18th Party Congress to choose new leaders takes place. Services down include Mail, Maps, Docs, and Google Analytics among others.
Via the Washington Post:
Google and many of its most popular subdomains, including Google e-mail, have been blocked by a “DNS poison” in China, according to Chinese Web monitoring site GreatFire.org, an extraordinary step in Web censorship even for the Chinese government. Attempting to access the Google services in China leads to a vacant IP address.
Via GreatFire.org, which monitors online censorship in China and reported the block:
We’ve argued before that the authorities didn’t dare to fully block GMail since it has too many users already. Fully blocking Google goes much further. … According to Alexa, it’s the Top 5 most used website in China. Never before have so many people been affected by a decision to block a website. If Google stays blocked, many more people in China will become aware of the extent of censorship. How will they react? Will there be protests?
Image: Twitter screenshot from GreatFire.org
Like any editor in the United States, I tweaked articles, butted heads with the sales department, and tried to extract interesting quotes out of boring people. Unlike my American counterparts, however, I was offered red envelopes stuffed with cash at press junkets, sometimes discovered footprints on the toilet seats at work, and had to explain to the Chinese assistants more than once that they could not turn in articles copied word for word from existing pieces they found online. I also liaised with our government censor…
…I was told that we could not title a coal piece “Power Failure” because the word “failure” in bold print so close to the Olympics would make people think of the Olympics being a failure. The title “The Agony and the Ecstasy” for a soccer piece was axed because agony was a negative word and we couldn’t have negative words be associated with sports. We couldn’t use the cover image I had picked out for a feature on the rise of chain restaurants, because it was of an empty bowl, and, [our censor] told me, it would make people think of being hungry and remind them of the Great Famine (a period from 1958 to 1961 when tens of millions of Chinese starved to death, discussion of which is still suppressed). Even our Chinese designers began to roll their eyes when I related this change to them, and set them to work looking for images of bowls overflowing with meat.
Eveline Chao, Foreign Policy. Me and My Censor: A reporter’s memoir of what it’s like to tell the truth about today’s China.
Chao was Managing Editor for an English-language magazine called China International Business and writes about the ins and outs of censorship in the newsroom despite, as she writes, “Business content is not censored as strictly as other areas in China, since it seems to be understood that greater openness is needed to push the economy forward and it doesn’t necessarily deal with the political issues Chinese rulers seem to find the most sensitive.”
In 2003-2004 I worked for an English-language paper in Saudi Arabia and while the censorship mechanics there are different from what Chao illustrates, her anecdotes had me nodding at their familiarity. — Michael
The VO1CE Project: citizen journalism and development
Think citizen journalism, think crowdsourcing, think video-documentaries, think advocacy, think mapping, think civic media. This is what the Vo1ce Project is about. An idea developed by Angelo Greco and Marija Govedarica focused on training citizens in underserved communities to report on sensitive issues and then publishing their findings on a web-based platform. Vo1ce’s goal is to foster community development by engaging marginalized localities in documenting and sharing information.
“We decided to focus, at least on this early stage of the project, on covering censorship because the problem is everywhere, and we think it affects every single layer of the communities in the Americas”, said Greco, a graduate from The American University, during an interview in a cafe in Mexico City.
Currently, Vo1ce has ongoing projects in Serbia, the USA, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. Angelo was visiting Mexico City looking for citizen journalists, journalists, activists, and human rights advocates willing to join the censorship project that is about to take off in the Latin American countries. After his stop in Mexico, he traveled to Medellin, Colombia, also looking for supporters. (Interested in joining the cause? send an email to info@vo1ceproject.org)
Why are they focusing in Latin America?
The complexities of the region in terms of the challenges faced by underserved communities and the interest of professional journalists to mentor citizen journalists are a great mix they’ve found in the region, said Greco.
According to Greco, the main challenges ahead for Vo1ce will be to find journalists and activists willing to join the cause, developing a friendly-yet-professional mobile app to help capture and transfer footage and then find the best way to publish the findings of their different projects in a visually compelling platform.
The Vo1ce Project is an NGO currently going through a fundraising campaign.
Image: Angelo and Marija founders of the Vo1ce Project.
![New Statesman Tries to Bypass the Great Firewall
The New Statesman’s current issue focuses on China and the magazine has created a Mandarin version of it as a PDF. Their hope is to get the publication around Chinese censors by using various torrent sites.
Via the New Statesman:
What will [Chinese readers] find inside? A story very different to the one they are told by the state-controlled press. Inside the issue, the former newspaper editor Cheng Yizhong speaks about how the Southern Metropolis Daily exposed the brutal “custody and repatriation” procedure used by the government on those without the correct ID, and the confinement and fatal beating of Sun Zhigang in 2003 (and subsequent cover-up). In 2004, Cheng was detained in secret for more than five months by the Guangdong authorities in 2004 for “economic crimes”, before being released.
In an exclusive essay, Cheng recounts the stifling conditions of media censorship in China, opening up about a media culture bombarded by “prohibitions” and riddled with informers who report directly to the government, in which only a minority of journalists are brave enough to fight the system.
Also in the issue is an interview conducted by activist artist Ai Weiwei of “a member of the “50 cent party” - a commenter paid half a dollar every time he derails an online debate in China”; Tibetan issues; persecution of human rights lawyers; and how artists of all stripes learn how to self-censor in order to succeed.
To preempt their domain — and the articles — from being blocked within China, the publication has uploaded the PDF version of the issue onto file sharing sites, writing, “Here is a direct link to the PDF, here is a link to the torrent file, here is a magnet link for the torrent, and here is a mirror of the torrent on Kickass Torrents. Please share.”
New Statesman, Taking on the Great Firewall of China.
Image: Ai Weiwei on the cover of the current issue of the New Statesman.
H/T: BoingBoing](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mc3vteZmTq1qedj2ho1_400.jpg)
New Statesman Tries to Bypass the Great Firewall
The New Statesman’s current issue focuses on China and the magazine has created a Mandarin version of it as a PDF. Their hope is to get the publication around Chinese censors by using various torrent sites.
Via the New Statesman:
What will [Chinese readers] find inside? A story very different to the one they are told by the state-controlled press. Inside the issue, the former newspaper editor Cheng Yizhong speaks about how the Southern Metropolis Daily exposed the brutal “custody and repatriation” procedure used by the government on those without the correct ID, and the confinement and fatal beating of Sun Zhigang in 2003 (and subsequent cover-up). In 2004, Cheng was detained in secret for more than five months by the Guangdong authorities in 2004 for “economic crimes”, before being released.
In an exclusive essay, Cheng recounts the stifling conditions of media censorship in China, opening up about a media culture bombarded by “prohibitions” and riddled with informers who report directly to the government, in which only a minority of journalists are brave enough to fight the system.
Also in the issue is an interview conducted by activist artist Ai Weiwei of “a member of the “50 cent party” - a commenter paid half a dollar every time he derails an online debate in China”; Tibetan issues; persecution of human rights lawyers; and how artists of all stripes learn how to self-censor in order to succeed.
To preempt their domain — and the articles — from being blocked within China, the publication has uploaded the PDF version of the issue onto file sharing sites, writing, “Here is a direct link to the PDF, here is a link to the torrent file, here is a magnet link for the torrent, and here is a mirror of the torrent on Kickass Torrents. Please share.”
New Statesman, Taking on the Great Firewall of China.
Image: Ai Weiwei on the cover of the current issue of the New Statesman.
H/T: BoingBoing
Meanwhile, In Iran
Two journalists begin their prison sentences.
Via the Committee to Protect Journalists:
Authorities summoned Shiva Nazar Ahari, a blogger and founding member of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters (CHRR), on Saturday to begin serving her prison sentence in the women’s ward of Tehran’s Evin Prison, according to CHRR. In 2010, Nazar Ahari was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of moharebeh, or “waging war against God,” “propagating against the regime,” and “acting against national security” for reporting on political gatherings, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. In January 2011, an appeals court reduced her sentence to four years in prison and 74 lashes, news reports said…
…In the other case, Zhila Bani Yaghoub, a former editor of the banned reformist daily Sarmayeh, began serving a one-year prison term on September 2 in Evin Prison’s women’s ward, according to news reports. She was sentenced in 2010 to a year in prison on anti-state charges and banned from practicing journalism for 30 years, news reports said.
Bani Yaghoub was arrested in June 2009 with her husband, Bahman Ahmadi Amouee, who is also a journalist, news reports said. Amouee, who is serving a five-year sentence, was transferred out of Evin Prison and sent to Rajaee Shahr Prison earlier this year, according to news reports.
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders reports that the country is disrupting Internet access in major cities in the lead up to the Islamic Revolution’s 31st anniversary, and Google Mail, specifically, has been blocked.
Also, Gizmodo reports that with the Iranian currency tanking, SMS messages that use words like “dollar” are being blocked.
The internet and other social media are harder and harder to control. Smart propaganda people like they are, are going to keep finding ways to spin and doctor and frame the information that gets out. Sometimes this may include getting news out first in official media, or replacing blunt censorship with efforts to spin. But it doesn’t mean that the Party is lying down passively in front of an onslaught of free expression. And when it comes to topics that are deemed to be political threats — Tibet, Tiananmen, Falungong, multipartyism, certain issues in Party history, and things like that — then I see no prospect that the Party will change its policy of censorship and repression.
Andrew Nathan, professor of political science at Columbia University, to Index on Censorship. China will change leaders, but keep censorship.
The News: In the upcoming months China will hold its 18th Congress during which the communist party will appoint a new group of leaders. It has been expected that Xi Jinping will be become the country’s next president. However, there’s a growing mystery over where he actually is these days.
CPJ: Venezuela’s private media wither under Chávez assault
The CPJ just released a special report on how Venezuela has used a combination of legal and illegal maneuvers to break down the country’s independent, private media, including non traditional outlets, such as websites.
According to the New York based NGO, Hugo Chavez desire to control what is published in the country has extended to the Internet. Under current legislation, for example, government officials can order Internet Service Providers to restrict websites that violate controls.
From CPJ’s report:… It curbs electronic media content according to the time of the day, with adult content reserved for shows after midnight, including violent or sexual content and soap operas—and news images of violence.
Chavez efforts to put more controls on what news outlets can publish is more a result of the President desire to curb freedom of expression and threat critics of the regime, than a candid concern about the quality of the content audiences in Venezuela are being exposed to.
FJP: El Universal and El Nacional newspapers have lost all government advertsising, another measure to put pressure on independent news outlets.
Myanmar Announces End to Press Censorship
It’s been a long time coming for the Southeast Asian country, but today the nation’s government stated that it will no longer censor private publications.
Journalists say they will remain cautious, however, despite the good news. The Irrawaddy, a longtime independent follower of Burmese struggle, explains the possible complications:
Under new rules released on the Information Ministry’s website on Monday, journalists will no longer have to submit their work to state censors before publication as they have for close to half-a-century.
However, reporters will still have to send their stories to the PSRD after publication so government monitors can determine whether their work violated any publishing laws, journalists said. It was not immediately clear to what degree that might result in self-censorship.
The country’s move toward a more democratic society has been underway for more than a year now, and several good things have come of it — political prisoners have been released, US sanctions have been lifted, democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi has reentered politics.
But some positive changes, like the sudden access to YouTube and FaceBook, have surprised onlookers. Racist comments posted against the country’s Rohingyas minority, coupled with the state-led “ethnic cleansing” of the fringe population, suddenly make some very large problems public.
FJP: Despite the complications, it’s a wonderful thing.
Attacks on Press Freedom & Speech: July 10 - July 20, 2012
For the past ten days I’ve taken screenshots of reported incidents of attacks on press freedom and speech that appear in my RSS feed. The majority of these come from Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
This, of course, isn’t everything that’s happened in the last ten days, but is a chilling reminder of what does happen during any particular, mostly mundane, time period around the globe.
If selecting the image doesn’t enlarge it enough to read the headline and dek of each, you can view the original biggie sized-version here.
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