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Internet Censorship: Chopping the Head off LulzSec

Posted by Sean on March 6, 2012 in Free Speech, Human Rights, Internet Censorship

For a while, it seemed that the hacker group with the silly name was running rings around the FBI. In the end, however, it appears it was the FBI running the show.

In the summer of 2011, LulzSec – supposedly short for “Lulz Security” – erupted out of nowhere and began a flashy string of hack attacks. They successfully went after major targets such as the Sony Corporation (which was forced into a public apology,) the U.S. Senate, PBS, and even the CIA. Their targets seemed to pop up randomly and their boastful Twitter feed became a must read for anyone interested in cyber security. For about two months, LulzSec was the “It” girl of hackers.

Then came the public questions as to whether LulzSec was a group of disgruntled Anonymous hackers, and whether the two groups were fighting with each other.  Unlike Anonymous, which tended to target opponents more for ideological reasons, LulzSec seemed happy to embarrass anyone, releasing reams of private information and generally making a lot of mischief on the web for, in their words, “…the lulz.”

Yet before anyone could answer these questions, LulzSec disappeared. “It’s time to say bon voyage,” they posted on their website (now removed.) “Our planned 50 day cruise has expired, and we must now sail into the distance, leaving behind – we hope – inspiration, fear, denial, happiness, approval, disapproval, mockery, embarrassment, thoughtfulness, jealousy, hate, even love.”

And just like that, LulzSec was gone. Or were they?

In late July, “AnonymousSabu”, thought to be one of LulzSec’s founders, threatened more hacks and new collaborations, either with unnamed media outlets or, possibly, with other hacker offshoots like AntiSec or AnonOps. A week later, once again, LulzSec seemed to disappear, but this time with no public flourish or smart-mouthed braying. Now we may know the reason why.

On Monday, March 6, the FBI arrested five individuals (one in the US, two in Britain and two in Ireland) that it says were involved in the LulzSec hacks. Further, according to documents unsealed in court, 28-year-old Hector Xavier Monsegur, a.k.a. “AnonymousSabu,” and LulzSec leader, has been cooperating with the FBI since August, turning over evidence and setting traps to snare his former LulzSec conspirators.

“As a result of Monsegur’s cooperation, which was confirmed by numerous senior-level officials,” reports Fox News, “the remaining top-ranking members of LulzSec were arrested or hit with additional charges Tuesday morning.” Jana Winter of Foxnews.com, in a sidebar feature, writes that Monsegur pleaded guilty August 15, 2011 to ten charges related to his hacking activities. In a plea deal, she writes, Monsegur agreed to turn evidence on his colleagues:

“Flipping Monsegur wasn’t easy. But with a charge of aggravated identity theft and a two-year prison sentence to hang over his head, the FBI forced Monsegur to weigh the political beliefs that drove him and his allegiance to cohorts around the world against his desire to be with his kids—he is the guardian of two children—and his extended family.

‘He didn’t go easy,’ a law enforcement official involved in flipping Sabu told FoxNews.com. ‘It was because of his kids. He didn’t want to go away to prison and leave them. That’s how we got him.’”

It’s unclear at this point what Monsegur’s fate may be. As for LulzSec, however, that seems much clearer. Writes Sam Biddle over at Gizmodo:
“Though LulzSec proper has been dormant since last summer, Sabu has remained a hugely influential character atop a vast cult of personality. The revelation that he’s sold out the movement he professed to love so much will deal as much a psychological as logistical blow to Anon(ymous.)”

A Coda: One of @AnoymousSabu’s last tweets, sent just one day before the arrests of his fellow Lulzers, reads:

“Without informants or companies bending over+giving up their customer data the feds would be further behind than they are now. Ride up.”

Who’s got lulz now?

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Internet Censorship: Top Hacker Turns Snitch, Alleged ‘Anonymous’ Leaders Busted

Posted by Sean on March 6, 2012 in Free Speech, Human Rights, Internet Censorship

Several alleged leaders of the international hacking organization “Anonymous” are not anonymous anymore.

U.S. officials Tuesday announced the arrests of six high-profile hackers, including Hector Xavier Monsegur. Documents filed in a federal court in New York indicate that Monsegur, known in the hacking community as “Sabu,” cooperated with the investigation, leading to the arrests.

The documents say Monsegur pleaded guilty last August to charges of computer hacking and conspiracy. He currently is free on $50,000 bond.

Monsegur claimed responsibility for attacks on the websites for Visa and Mastercard, two large credit card companies, and the online payment service PayPal, as well as on government computers in Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Zimbabwe and the U.S. Senate.

Court papers also identified Monsegur as a member of two other hacking groups, “Lulz Security” and “Internet Feds.”

Another top hacker was identified in court papers as Jeremy Hammond. Authorities arrested him in Chicago.

Officials say the arrests should deal a major blow to Anonymous, which has wrecked havoc on a range of government agencies and private corporations.

A group that sends out a Twitter feed for Anonymous assured followers and supporters that the group is okay and will continue hacking.

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Media Censorship: Media Freedom Worsens in China

Posted by Sean on March 1, 2012 in Free Speech, Government Control, Human Rights, Media Censorship

Tightened press controls followed official concerns about ‘Jasmine’ uprisings.

China has fallen once again in world press freedom rankings, following a year marked by crackdowns around the world, the Paris-based press monitor Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in an annual report.

“Control of news and information continued to tempt governments and to be a question of survival for totalitarian and repressive regimes,” the group said in a statement on its website as it released its 10th annual press freedom index.

“The past year also highlighted the leading role played by netizens in producing and disseminating news,” RSF said. “Crackdown was the word of the year in 2011.”

At the bottom of the index were Eritrea, Turkmenistan, and North Korea, which RSF described as “absolute dictatorships that permit no civil liberties.”

“This year, they are immediately preceded at the bottom by Syria, Iran, and China, three countries that seem to have lost contact with reality as they have been sucked into an insane spiral of terror,” it said.

“Dictatorships fear and ban information, especially when it may undermine them.”

China came 174th on the index in 2011, compared with 171st in 2010 and 168th in 2009.

The ‘right to protest‘

Hangzhou-based rights activist Chen Shuqing said the ‘Jasmine’ uprisings of the Arab Spring had resulted in a huge crackdown on both activists and independent media professionals, including netizens and citizen journalists.

He cited the example of veteran pro-democracy activist Zhu Yufu, who is awaiting trial on subversion charges after he posted a poem online calling on his fellow Chinese to take to the streets in peaceful protest.

“The poem called on citizens to take to the streets … and the right to demonstrate or protest against the government is enshrined in Clause 35 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China,” he said.

“[This ensures] the freedom of expression, of publication, of association, and demonstration,” Chen said.

New York-based rights activist Liu Qing said China’s ruling Communist Party had stepped up controls of all kinds in the past year.

“The Party itself admits that there are hundreds of thousands of so-called mass incidents every year,” Liu said. “These incidents are developing into something more serious.”

He cited recent successful protests in Guangdong’s rebel village of Wukan, where residents fought off armed police at the barricades after protesting against corruption in their local government linked to the sale of their farmland.

“This was an organized rebellion,” Liu said. “The villagers themselves elected someone to lead them … and fierce protests involving more than 10,000 people are emerging all the time in Guangdong,” he said.

Tightened controls

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in its annual report last month that the renewed crackdown on political activists had been accompanied by tightened media controls and a bleaker climate for freedom of expression.

The group detailed the cases of 34 Chinese journalists jailed during 2011 on charges ranging from “incitement to subversion” to “revealing state secrets.”

While investigative journalism in China has gained strength in recent years, a strict censorship system aimed at rooting out information deemed a threat to the ruling Communist Party has kept pace, the group said.

 

Reported by Gao Shan for RFA’s Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Copyright © 1998-2011, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.
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Somali Journalist Killing Is Latest in Violent Trend

Posted by Sean on March 1, 2012 in Free Speech, Government Control, Media Censorship

Somali journalists carry the slain body of their colleague, Abdisalan Sheikh Hasan, during his funeral in southern Mogadishu, Somalia, December 19, 2011.

A Mogadishu radio-station director has became the third Somali journalist killed in as many months. The death underscores the constant threat against journalists working in the war-torn country.

Abukar Hassan Mohamoud is the latest journalist to be killed in the bullet-ridden Somali capital, Mogadishu. Witnesses say unidentified gunmen assassinated the Somaliweyn radio station director late Tuesday at his home in the Wadajir district.

Radio Somaliweyn is an independent radio station operating in northern Mogadishu.

The National Union of Somali Journalists has condemned the killings. Union Secretary General Mohamed Ibrahim said it is not clear why Mohamoud was targeted, but noted that in recent times he was involved in civil society activities.

“He was planning to bring the radio on air again. The reason is yet unclear, though he was very involved in civil society activism, such as youth in Banadir region in recent days. This is a really worrying trend for the journalists working in Mogadishu and the government has not done enough to investigate and bring suspects for prosecution,” said Ibrahim.

The killing came just a month after another journalist, Radio Shabelle Network Director Hassan Osman Abdi, was gunned down outside his house in Mogadishu. The Transitional Federal Government promised to investigate the murder and arrested two suspects.

In December, a government soldier killed journalist Abdisalan His at a checkpoint in the capital.

The head of the Reporters Without Borders’ Africa desk, Ambroise Pierre, said civil society and the elite in Mogadishu are targeted because of their political influence.

“When journalists are being targeted like this, and targeted in their house, it shows that people are really looking into killing the information.  For an organization like ours what is important is to stop this process,” said Pierre.

Pierre also said for a country like Somalia, without a stable government, there is need for the international community to support independent investigations into such crimes. He said this may help to catch the killers and stop this cycle of violence against the media.

The Transitional Federal Government says it has secured Mogadishu and the city is safe. Ibrahim disagrees.

“I do no think Mogadishu is safe for journalists unless the government ends the culture of impunity and brings the killers to the court. We feel as a union, it is yet unsafe,” said Ibrahim.

Media-rights groups say Somalia is the most dangerous country in Africa for journalists.

In addition to the recent killings, the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists [CPJ] also has condemned the arrest and assault of another journalist in the semi-autonomous region of Somaliland.

A CPJ statement this week said Mohamed Abdirahman was arrested and beaten by police, who accused him of publishing a false story that said Ethiopian separatists had settled in a town in the region.

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Internet Opens Russia for Democracy Movement

Posted by Sean on January 25, 2012 in Freedom of Expression, Human Rights, Internet Censorship

News media observers look on as Russian opposition leaders and activists sit around a table to discuss a proposed opposition protest set for next month, in advance of upcoming presidential elections which they say are unfair, in Moscow, January 24, 2012.

Russia’s protest movement grew and got organized with speed that startled many in the political establishment. Russia’s uncensored Internet allows people to communicate, coordinate and raise money for rallies, all through their computers.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is running for president in elections March 4. His campaign website photos show him skiing, skating and fighting in a judo match.

But on the Internet, one satire rips off the latest Sasha Baron Cohen’s comedy, The Dictator. It has Russia’s leader winning a running presidential race by shooting his opponents with a starting pistol.

Another video is a takeoff on the movie Titanic.

It places Prime Minister Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev at the bow of the boat, as their Russia political project heads straight toward an iceberg.

In another video, psychiatrists in white coats dance in a chorus line singing, “Our Madhouse Vote for Putin.” Watched by over one-million people, this won a recent YouTube music video contest in Russia.

Online videos like these are shaping the generation that protests Mr. Putin’s plan to rule Russia for another decade. With 50 million Russians now online, many Russians have stopped watching news programs on state-controlled TV.

Sam Greene, an American political scientist in Moscow, says Russia’s Internet is forcing TV news coverage to change — or die.

“They then had to cover the December 24 as an anti-Putin protest,” said Greene. “That has not been on television ever. And it was the combination of the fact that the Internet would have put the information out there, and did put that information out there. And there were 80, 100, 120,000 people on the streets, which is hard to miss. That forced television into this corner.”

In cyberspace, Putin’s backers counterattacked with his interactive campaign website. But, once again, his opponents proved to be quicker on the web.

They immediately posted suggestions like this one from Andrei Antonenko, “Please leave politics. It is obvious that power is a narcotic.”

Anti-Putin comments like these immediately rose to the top of the online voting ranking. Campaign workers took them down. But screen grabs went viral.

Greene, who also directs a New Media program in the Russian capital, says:

“They should have seen it coming.  They did not see it coming,” added Greene.

Oddly, Putin’s party, United Russia, appears nowhere on his campaign website.  That is because Internet blogger Alexey Navalny ruined the party brand, by saddling it online with an unshakeable label, “the party of swindlers and thieves.”

While Russia’s government loses the Internet information war, the opposition now uses the Internet to raise money for rallies.  Alexei Kozlov raised $130,000 in online contributions from about 5,000 contributors.  He says Yandex Money, the payment system, limits payments to $500, which means no one can charge that one or two oligarchs are bankrolling the protests.

Also, Yandex Money only works inside Russia. He says no one can accuse the movement of being funded by the United States.

Finally, the opposition uses Facebook and other social network sites to inform people about protests. Two weeks before a mass march is to go through central Moscow, the city has no political graffiti, and no political posters.  But if protest planners hit their targets, the February 4 march will be another Internet-driven flash mob of 100,000 people.

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Internet Censorship: The Wiki Blackout, One Day Later

Posted by Sean on January 24, 2012 in Freedom of Expression, Human Rights, Internet Censorship

Just What, If Anything, Did Wednesday’s Protest Achieve?

Not content to leave the battle un-joined, the hacker group Anonymous stepped into the SOPA fray Thursday evening by launching a massive denial of service attack on several SOPA supporters, including Universal Music, the RIAA and MPAA. Also targeted was the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Copyright Office; although those attacks are likely to have been prompted more by Thursday’s shutdown of the website “MegaUpload” by Justice officials. AnonOps claims that 5,635 individual machines were used to launch the coordinated attacks, the largest single effort yet by Anonymous.  As we’ve noted before, when there’s a big story that has anything to do with the Internet, expect Anonymous to step in.

Whether the protests and hacks changed minds isn’t clear; however it has changed the bills’ fortunes on Capitol Hill. Friday Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) announced he would shelve SOPA for the moment, while in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) cancelled a vote on PIPA.

It had been building for days. “Twitter, join the protest,” tweeted Ben Huh, founder and CEO of the mega-successful “I Can Has Cheezburger” websites. “Go Google for blacking out logo!” read another.

For weeks Huh had been using his Twitter account and other means to encourage Internet companies of all stripes to join in a one day protest against two pieces of legislation currently before Congress. “SOPA”, for Stop Online Piracy Act, and “PIPA”, the “Protect IP Act” were designed, say its authors, to crack down on overseas copyright piracy by strengthening the U.S. government’s hand in who they could prosecute and remove from the web.

Introduced more than a year ago, the legislation has the strong support of major entertainment companies such as Sony or the Motion Picture Association of America, or MPAA. But it has equally strong opposition, centered mostly among civil libertarians, online freedom activists and Internet-based firms like Google and Wikipedia.

This back and forth has put the bills into a sort of legislative limbo – not scheduled for floor or committee markup, but not officially dead, either. So beginning early January, Huh and others proposed a protest that would grab headlines, and perhaps knock SOPA’s advocates back on their heels. Their Internet sites would go dark for 24-hours, replacing their usual content with a stark message warning about the dangers of the bills, and urging users to contact their members of Congress.

So what happened? To start, Wikipedia went dark – kind of. The online compendium of facts large to obscure was unavailable for 24 hours, offering instead a shadowy black-and-white message on why PIPA and SOPA would censor services like theirs. It was billed as a total blackout, but as mobile phone and tablet users quickly found out, there was a still a back door open for full access from mobile devices.  Ben Huh’s “I Can Haz Cheezburger?” family of 54 websites of lolcats and goofy pranks all featured a large shield that could only be removed by clicking through to a site warning about the bills, and urging users to sign letters of protest. (Once clicked, however, all the lolcats were again available.) Google slapped a large black box over its logo, although its search function continued to work, and online magazine Wired blacked out all the text on its site, which, however, became visible when you moused-over it.

“Boing Boing”, “Firefox”, “Tumblr”; these and many more sites limited services and featured ominous warnings about the bills. But many other sites did not participate. Twitter refused to join the protest, calling such a single-issue stoppage of a global company “foolish.” Amazon.com didn’t make mention of the bills either – but this perhaps was less surprising as retailers, in general, would not be as threatened under PIPA and SOPA than over content-rich sites. Even some editors of Wikipedia complained that the blackout could threaten Wikipedia’s reputation as a non-biased source of information. “My main concern is that it puts the organization in the role of advocacy,” editor Robert Lawton told the Associated Press.  “Before we know it, we’re blacked out because we want to save the whales.”

In the end, the protest garnered headlines but changed few minds. Ebay, Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, Twitter and others still oppose SOPA, while NBC Universal, Comcast, 3M, Walmart, the RIAA and others still support it. And the larger question now is: what will opponents do if and when the bills actually start moving again in Congress? A one day blackout is one thing; shutting access for an indefinite period of time will be a much harder, and costlier, sell.

For his part, SOPA author Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has introduced a “manager’s amendment” – which you can read here – which represents a modification of the original bill, and one that, for parliamentary reasons, Rep. Smith may begin to move through committee as early as February. In the meantime, SOPA & PIPA proponents, such as the Creative Alliance, have announced they will soon launch an advertising campaign about the benefits of the bills.

And Ben Huh isn’t the only one taking his campaign to Twitter. SOPA supporter Rupert Murdoch tweeted yesterday: “Seems blogosphere has succeeding in terrorizing many senators and congressmen who previously committed. Politicians all the same.”

Stay tuned

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Internet Censorship: Copyright Enforcement Vs. Censorship — Impact Of ‘Megaupload’ Case

Posted by Sean on January 24, 2012 in Freedom of Expression, Human Rights, Internet Censorship

The founder of the file-sharing website Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, a German national also known as Kim Schmitz, appears in a court in Auckland on January 23.

Joss Wright, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, speaks to RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz about the possible impact of the Megaupload copyright case on Internet freedoms around the world.

RFE/RL: The U.S. government shut down the file-sharing websites of Megaupload on grounds of copyright infringement last week without the use of two proposed U.S. laws that are quite controversial — the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and the Protect IP Act, or PIPA. Does the Megaupload case suggest that SOPA and PIPA are unnecessary?

Joss Wright: It’s an interesting coincidence that [the closure of Megaupload] happened on the same day that the SOPA and PIPA legislation was pushed back by the U.S. government — where it was eventually decided that it wasn’t going to be debated in response to these protests that were happening around the world. It was interesting to see that, really, the powers that SOPA and PIPA were going to be granting the U.S. government — the powers that people were most worried about — it was demonstrated in the Megaupload case that really those powers already existed.

Joss Wright

There is a lot of power that the U.S. government has, when it chooses to have it, over websites — particularly websites that are knowingly and notably infringing copyright. The Megaupload [case] — you could almost consider it as an example [by the U.S. government] to say, “Look. We have a certain amount of power. We can take down websites and we will take down websites if we feel they are harming our interests.”

RFE/RL: Is there a danger that dictators or autocratic regimes in other countries might use the U.S. case against Megaupload as grounds to justify clampdowns on Internet freedoms?

Wright: Around the world, when you look at it, every country to some extent censors or controls the amount of information that is going across the Internet. But it’s very difficult for the U.S. to promote free and open communications on the Internet when Iran is stopping the flow of information on the Internet, but then turn around and censor sites on their own Internet. Other countries can say, “If you can censor the Internet because people are sharing copyrighted content, why can’t we censor the Internet because people are saying things that are deeply offensive to our culture and our religion or political viewpoint?”

In a wider sense, it’s difficult to draw the line between what is censorship and what is enforcing our laws.

RFE/RL: On a global level, what other dangers are posed to freedom of information over the Internet by the U.S. argument that it can shut down websites that violate copyrights?

Wright: The approach that the U.S. has taken here has been very much focused on the legality, the legal issues. And particularly, when you are talking about copyright, you are talking about the Berne Convention. You’re talking about one of the very, very few laws that has almost universal international acceptance.

To some extent, this is why a lot of people are concerned. It’s because this gets the idea of Internet censorship into play. And the great concern is that this can be extended. Once we start taking down websites in this very broad, in this very easy to achieve sense for these kinds of claims, then we start to move toward an Internet where a lot of content that we disagree with can be taken down. And we come up with a much less free and much less open Internet.

 

Copyright (c) 2011. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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Hypocrisy in Hollywood: Infographic

Posted by Sean on March 4, 2012 in Censorship, Freedom of Expression, Government Control

Hypocrisy in Hollywood
Created by: Paralegal.net

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DMCA: Horrors of a Broad and Automated Censorship Tool

Posted by Sean on March 4, 2012 in Censorship, Free Speech, Freedom of Expression

The DMCA was once drafted to protect the interests of copyright holders, allowing them to take infringing content offline. Today, however, the system is systematically abused by rights-holders as an overboard censorship tool. One third of the notices sent to Google are false, companies like Microsoft censor perfectly legal sites, and others use the DMCA to get back at competitors.

Earlier this week one of TorrentFreak’s articles was censored by Google on behalf of a copyright holder.

The article in question was mysteriously flagged as being infringing by an automated DMCA takedown tool. An honest mistake according to the people who sent the notice, but one that doesn’t stand in isolation.

Google previously noted that that 37% of all DMCA notices they receive are not valid copyright claims.

One of the problems is that many rights-holders use completely automated systems to inform Google and other service providers of infringements. They swear under penalty of perjury that the notices are correct, but this is often an outright lie.

Microsoft, for example, has sent Google dozens of notices about the massive infringements that occur on the site Youhavedownloaded.com, a site that is completely non-infringing. As a result, many pages of the website have been de-listed from Google’s search results, directly damaging the site’s owners.

Other rights-holders make even stranger mistakes by massively taking down content that they don’t own. The adult content outfit AFS Media for example asked Google to remove links to the movies Braveheart, Monsters Inc, Green Lantern and many more titles that have nothing to do with the content they produce.

Similar mistakes are made at NBC Universal who got Google to censor the independent and free-to-share movie A Lonely Place for Dying.

Or again by Microsoft, who successfully requested Google to remove a link to a copy of the open source operating system Kubuntu.

And then there’s YouTube’s content-ID system. We previously outlined many mistakes that were made by the DMCA-style anti-piracy filter, resulting in tens of thousands of ridiculously inaccurate claims.

This week yet another example came up when YouTube labeled birds tweeting in the background of a video as copyrighted music. Again a mistake, but one that probably would have never been corrected if Reddit and Hacker News hadn’t picked it up.

Aside from the mistakes outlined above, there’s also a darker side to DMCA abuse. Google previously revealed that 57% of all the DMCA notices they receive come from companies targeting competitors.

The “competition” angle also ties into the row between Megaupload and Universal Music Group. The latter removed a promo video from the cyberlocker from YouTube on copyright grounds, without owning the rights to any of the material.

It’s safe to say that the DMCA is broadly abused. Thousands of automated notices with hundreds of links each are sent out on a daily basis, turning it into a broad censorship tool. Only the tip of the iceberg is visible to the public thanks to companies like Google who publish some of the notices online.

We can only wonder what’s happening behind the scenes at other sites, but it’s not going to be any better.

Just a few months ago the cyberlocker service Hotfile sued Warner Bros. for DMCA abuse. In the suit Hotfile accuses the movie studio of systematically abusing its anti-piracy tool by taking down hundreds of titles they don’t hold the copyrights to, including open source software.

Not good.

While we’re the first to admit that copyright holders need tools to protect their work from being infringed, mistakes and abuse as outlined above shouldn’t go unpunished. The DMCA was never intended to be an over-broad and automated piracy filter in the first place.

The above also illustrates why it’s dangerous to allow rights-holders to take entire websites offline, as the SOPA and PIPA bills would allow. The MPAA and RIAA have said many times that legitimate sites would never be affected, but didn’t they say exactly the same about the DMCA?

 

Re-published from TorrentFreak under the creative commons license.
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Internet Censorship: CCP Proposes Cells For Microblogs

Posted by Sean on March 1, 2012 in Free Speech, Human Rights, Internet Censorship

China’s ruling Communist Party wants to set up branches at all major microblogging sites.

Chinese netizens at an Internet cafe in Quanzhou, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

Authorities plan to establish propaganda department branches of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the offices of Chinese Internet companies providing microblogging services, according to reports and netizens.

The Party’s move, first reported by Taiwan’s United Daily News, is part of a bid to increase Beijing’s surveillance of public opinion.

The new measure follows a decision by central authorities to enforce a “real name policy” for all bloggers on China’s four biggest microblogging sites: sina.com, qq.com, sohu.com, and 163.com.

Beijing-based media expert Li Bin said the plan was unlikely to have a major impact on China’s microblogging community.

“I don’t think this new way of controlling people’s minds will work,” Li said in an interview on Tuesday.

“Netizens can express their views by using indirect words. If measured by the skill of using tactful ways to voice their true feelings, the Chinese are probably the number one in the world,” he said.

“Because we are dealing with an authoritarian or totalitarian power, we must be skillful with our choice of wording.”

Microblogs hailed

Li Bin hailed the use of Chinese microblogging sites in the dissemination of information.

“[Microblogs] can transfer information extremely fast, especially news on social injustices such as forced land grabs,” Li said.

“These services informed people about the ‘Jasmine walks’ and other sensitive news,” he said.

The beginning of the Arab Spring in Tunisia last year sparked online calls for Chinese activists to begin their own Jasmine Revolution, prompting the detention and surveillance of hundreds of dissidents and rights defenders across the country.

Li explained why netizens prefer microblogs.

“It’s because the official media will not cover news that appears on [microblogs],” he said.

Phone calls to the microblogging customer service line at sina.com on Tuesday were answered by an employee, but the man declined to comment.

“We can only provide technical assistance, and your inquiries [about Party branches] are not part of our jurisdiction,” he said.

‘Doomed to fail’

Xiao Jiansheng, an editor with a newspaper run by the Communist Party’s provincial committee in central Hunan province, said that without microblogs to vent their grievances, social tensions would increase in China.

“The idea [of setting up Party branches] is doomed to fail, unless [the government] bans the use of the Internet altogether,” Xiao said.

“Social conflict is now very tense—like in Tibet, in Guangdong province, and in land disputes [around the country]. But the Chinese authorities are trying to crack down on these [situations],” he said.

He noted that in some cities, authorities are spending “tremendous amounts of money” to maintain stability by recruiting police “by the hundreds and thousands.”

“But how many of them are enough to protect [the Party]?” he asked.

“People must have their own channels to voice their concerns and anger; otherwise the whole regime will collapse.”

China’s netizens now number 500 million, more than one-fifth of whom use microblogs.

 

Original reporting by Qiao Long from Hong Kong for Mandarin. Translated by Ping Chen.
Copyright © 1998-2011, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.
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Burma: Censorship Abolished In ‘Months’

Posted by Sean on March 1, 2012 in Censorship

The head of Burma’s censorship board says a law has been drafted and is awaiting approval.

Burma’s censorship chief insisted Wednesday that the country’s censorship board will be abolished in “a matter of months,” despite recent reports of a rollback on press freedoms in the lead-up to elections.

Tint Swe, director of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Department (PSRD), repeated the claims he had made in an interview with RFA three months earlier that the department would be abolished, even as reports surfaced on Monday from journalists in the country that his office had censored several news items over the previous week.

“The new Press Law, which is still in the process of being enacted, will guarantee freedom of expression in Burma,” Swe told RFA in an interview by telephone on Wednesday.

“It won’t take too long to adopt the Press Law—it would just be a matter of months after discussions at the upcoming parliament session [starting Jan. 27],” he said.

Swe said that the law had already been drafted by Burma’s Ministry of Information and sent to the Attorney General’s office for approval.

“Once it’s adopted, the censorship department will be abolished.”

In October, Tint Swe had told RFA that the board would be shuttered “in the near future.”

“Press censorship is nonexistent in most other countries as well as among our neighbors, and as it is not in harmony with democratic practices, press censorship should be abolished in the near future,” Tint Swe said in the earlier interview.

But only last week, reporters within Burma informed RFA that the PSRD had noted down censorship directives on a number of draft news reports submitted to the board by journals and had also issued several verbal warnings to media outlets.

They said that press freedom had been significantly set back over the last week as many news items were censored by the PSRD.

Local journalists also pointed out that Burmese officials have not provided them with a clear policy regarding news publication.

Recent restrictions

Specifically, journalists said, the PSRD had instructed local media to not use or to tone down news about democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for the release of remaining political prisoners and the need for rule of law, as well as comments by leaders of the popular 88 Generation Students group.

They added that any suggestion of reorganizing student unions or clamor for the release of remaining political prisoners in the country is being seen as inappropriate.

The PSRD also instructed the local media to completely black out publication of a decision last week by the official Buddhist monastic council to evict the abbot of the Sadhu Pariyatti Monastery in Rangoon for his outspoken political views.

Also regarded as taboo were complaints of campaign irregularities by Burma’s ruling and military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) ahead of April 1 elections in which Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy are participating for the first time since 1990.

Journalists said Tint Swe had personally issued the censorship orders.

Tint Swe denied the charges Wednesday, saying his department had continued to apply the same principles of censorship to the press that it had always used.

“Currently, we are not tightening censorship,” Tint Swe said, reiterating that the government would only push forward with reforms.

“As I told you three months ago, press censorship will definitely be abolished. The President [Thein Sein] and our minister [of information] have been clearly saying the same thing—that censorship won’t exist after the Press Law is adopted,” he said.

“Therefore, we are not going back. We will be going forward and moving towards freedom.”

Gradual reforms

The PSRD, set up more than four decades ago when the military took over the country, has eased restrictions on certain media coverage since President Thein Sein’s government took power in March after elections called by the then-ruling military junta, which had been accused of blatant human rights abuses.

All media publications previously had to send drafts of their reports to the censorship department.

Since June 10 last year, the department allowed publications dealing with entertainment, sports, technology, health, and children’s issues to practice “self censorship,” whereby editors themselves were given the task of omitting materials that could be deemed as sensitive instead of sending their draft reports to the department.

Publications that covered politics and other issues deemed sensitive by the authorities, however, have to continue sending drafts of their reports to the department.

But restrictions on coverage for Aung San Suu Kyi’s activities were eased while authorities also lifted a longstanding ban on international news websites, exiled Burmese news websites, and YouTube.

Some groups said the government may be tightening censorship now because of the April 1 by-elections in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s party will challenge the ruling party.

But Ko Ko Hlaing, the chief political adviser to Thein Sein, said Monday that the government is serious about having the by-elections be free and fair, and that Aung San Suu Kyi will have the same access as other party leaders to the media, according to exile Mizzima News Agency.

Reported by Kyaw Kyaw Aung for RFA’s Burmese service. Translated by Kyaw Kyaw Aung. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Copyright © 1998-2011, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036.
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China’s Top Official in Tibet Orders New Media Clampdown

Posted by Sean on March 1, 2012 in Free Speech, Government Control, Media Censorship

China’s top leader in Tibet is urging local authorities to clamp down on Internet and mobile phone use in the region, as Beijing prepares to open its annual National People’s Congress and Tibetans honor those who have died protesting Chinese rule.

The state-run Tibet Daily quotes regional Communist Party chief Chen Quanguo as saying that maintaining stability in the Himalayan region “means everything. Unstable elements must be nipped in the bud and all work at maintaining stability must be deepened.”

He also said security forces “must crush hostile forces” led by the Dalai Lama — the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader who is widely revered outside China, while accused by Beijing of fomenting rebellion in Tibetan regions.

China has flooded Tibetan areas with thousands of troops and police in recent weeks, in a push to prevent Tibetan activists from setting themselves on fire to protest Chinese presence in their territories.

The latest crackdown call — just days ahead of the anniversary of deadly unrest in 2011 and 2008 — has reached all the way to Beijing. There, outspoken Tibetan writer-poet Tsering Woeser said Wednesday that security police prevented her from receiving a cultural award from the Dutch ambassador.

China’s showcase annual legislative session begins next week, and authorities in past years have sought to portray national unity by squelching any and all signs of public dissent in the capital.

For Tibetans, March 17 marks the first anniversary of a widely-reported self-immolation by a young monk whose death triggered the current crackdown.

March 17 is also the fourth anniversary of a larger and deadly Chinese crackdown in Tibetan areas, and the 53rd anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s escape to northern India, after a failed uprising in Tibet against Chinese rule.

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Art Censorship: Pissy Pussy Comic – ‘Getting Social’

Posted by Sean on January 24, 2012 in Art Censorship, Freedom of Expression, Literature Censorship

The following comic art, story and characters are Copyright © 2012 DarkBrain, LLC. All rights reserved.

Images used by permission of DarkBrain, LLC. See more awesome art and comics at DarkBrain.com

 

 

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