industryterm:internet censorship

We monitor and challenge internet censorship in China | GreatFire.org
▻https://en.greatfire.org

GreatFire Apps

FreeBrowser
►https://freebrowser.org
FreeBrowser is the only browser that allows Chinese internet users to directly access uncensored news. 40% of our users have never used a circumvention tool before.

FreeBooks
▻https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.greatfire.freebook
In an effort to crackdown on freedom of speech, the Chinese authorities have kidnapped and “disappeared” book publishers. FreeBooks fights back by making it easy for readers in China to get their hands on uncensored e-books and audio books, helping to inform and educate those who want to learn more.

GreatFire Websites

FreeBrowser StartPage
▻http://startpage.freebrowser.org/zh
We have directed Chinese internet users more than 13 million times to censored news stories about government corruption, politics, scandals and other “sensitive” information.

FreeWeChat
▻https://freewechat.com
No other website restores and republishes censored information from WeChat, China’s ubiquitous and most popular application. Our dataset grows larger each and every day and provides a real-time and accurate litmus test of the information that the Chinese authorities find most threatening.

FreeWeibo
▻https://freeweibo.com
We mimic the look and feel of the real Weibo website, but instead of presenting a “harmonized” version of the popular social media network, we restore and integrate censored and deleted posts (currently numbering more than 300,000), so that Chinese can access a real-time view of the real discussions that are taking place online in China.

FreeBrowser.org
►https://freebrowser.org
Promotes FreeBrowser.

Circumvention Central
▻https://cc.greatfire.org
No other website tests the speed and stability of free and paid circumvention tools from China. We provide an unbiased, data-driven view of what is working and what is not so that Chinese can make informed decisions when choosing a circumvention tool.

GreatFire Analyzer
▻https://greatfire.org/analyzer
No other website has accumulated as much data as we have around the blocking of websites and keywords. We make ourselves available to the media and have been quoted in thousands of news stories.

GreatFire.org
▻https://greatfire.org
This website.

GitHub Wiki
▻https://github.com/greatfire/wiki
Our GitHub wiki enables our users in China to download our apps directly without circumventing.

applecensorship.com
▻https://applecensorship.com

About Us

We are an anonymous organization based in China. We launched our first project in 2011 in an effort to help bring transparency to online censorship in China. Now we focus on helping Chinese to freely access information. Apart from being widely discussed in most major mass media, GreatFire has also been the subject of a number of academic papers from various research institutions. FreeWeibo.com won the 2013 Deutsche Welle “Best Of Online Activism” award in the “Best Innovation” category. In 2016, GreatFire won a Digital Activism fellowship from Index on Censorship.

#Chine #censure #vie_privée #surveillance

India Proposes Chinese-Style Internet Censorship - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/technology/india-internet-censorship.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/02/15/business/15indiacensor1/15indiacensor1-facebookJumbo.jpg

NEW DELHI — India’s government has proposed giving itself vast new powers to suppress internet content, igniting a heated battle with global technology giants and prompting comparisons to censorship in China.

Under the proposed rules, Indian officials could demand that Facebook, Google, Twitter, TikTok and others remove posts or videos that they deem libelous, invasive of privacy, hateful or deceptive. Internet companies would also have to build automated screening tools to block Indians from seeing “unlawful information or content.” Another provision would weaken the privacy protections of messaging services like WhatsApp so that the authorities could trace messages back to their original senders.

Hum, pas forcément très différent de l’Article 13... quand les Le Pen (équivalent français de Narandra Modi) seront au pouvoir... Pas simple tout ça. Et puis si la Chine n’est plus la seule a devenir le repoussoir universel, où va-t-on ?

Working independently as well as through trade groups, Microsoft, Facebook and dozens of other tech companies are fighting back against the proposals. They criticized the rules as technically impractical and said they were a sharp departure from how the rest of the world regulates “data intermediaries,” a term for companies that host data provided by their customers and users.

In most countries, including under India’s existing laws, such intermediaries are given a “safe harbor.” That means they are exempted from responsibility for illegal or inappropriate content posted on their services, as long as they remove it once notified by a court or another designated authority.

In a filing with the ministry last week, Microsoft said that complying with India’s new standards would be “impossible from the process, legal and technology point of view.”

Officials have offered little public explanation for the proposals, beyond a desire to curb the kind of false rumors about child kidnappers that spread on WhatsApp a year ago and that incited angry mobs to kill two dozen innocent people. That wave of violence has since subsided.

The coming national election has added urgency to the proposals. India’s Election Commission, which administers national and state elections, is considering a ban on all social media content and ads aimed at influencing voters for the 48 hours before voting begins, according to an internal report obtained by the news media. To buttress its legal authority to order such a ban, the commission wrote to the I.T. ministry last week asking it to amend the new rules to specifically prohibit online content that violates election laws or commission orders.

C’est comme si ça me rappelait quelque chose...

Et puis, le Alibaba local est dans la boucle. Y’a que les européens qui n’ont pas champion local à opposer aux GAFAM.

One of the biggest cheerleaders for the new rules was Reliance Jio, a fast-growing mobile phone company controlled by Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest industrialist. Mr. Ambani, an ally of Mr. Modi, has made no secret of his plans to turn Reliance Jio into an all-purpose information service that offers streaming video and music, messaging, money transfer, online shopping, and home broadband services.

In a filing last week, Reliance Jio said the new rules were necessary to combat “miscreants” and urged the government to ignore free-speech protests. The company also said that encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp, “although perceivably beneficial to users, are detrimental to national interest and hence should not be allowed.”

Entre les architectures toxiques des plateformes et la toxicité des lois liberticides, on est malbarre.

#Inde #Censure #Médias_sociaux #Article_13

New Site Exposes How Apple Censors Apps in China
▻https://theintercept.com/2019/02/01/apple-apps-china-censorship

A new website exposes the extent to which Apple cooperates with Chinese government internet censorship, blocking access to Western news sources, information about human rights and religious freedoms, and privacy-enhancing apps that would circumvent the country’s pervasive online surveillance regime. The new site, AppleCensorship.com, allows users to check which apps are not accessible to people in China through Apple’s app store, indicating those that have been banned. It was created by (...)

#Apple #VPN #censure #TheGreatFirewallofChina #web #surveillance

https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2019/01/apple-china-1548874162.jpg

#Facebook: The global censor - World Socialist Web Site
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/12/29/pers-d29.html

Facebook: The global censor
29 December 2018

The year 2018 has seen a vast intensification of internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Twitter, transforming them from tools for exchanging information and communicating around the world into massive censorship dragnets for policing what their users say, do and think.

In August 2017, the World Socialist Web Site published an open letter to Google charging that the company, in collusion with the US government, was working to shape political discourse by manipulating search results. The open letter warned that Google’s actions set a dangerous precedent for subverting constitutional protections of freedom of speech and demanded that the company cease what the WSWS called “political blacklisting” of left-wing sites.

Sixteen months later, the central argument of the open letter—that Google and its peers are carrying out political censorship—is undeniable. The regime that Google pioneered through its search engine has been expanded to all major US social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

#censure #réseaux_sociaux

A Google update just created a big problem for anti-censorship tools
▻https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/18/17253784/google-domain-fronting-discontinued-signal-tor-vpn

Domain-fronting is now a thing of the past App developers won’t be able to use Google to get around internet censorship anymore. The Google App Engine is discontinuing a practice called domain-fronting, which let services use Google’s network to get around state-level internet blocks. A recent change in Google’s network architecture means the trick no longer works. First spotted by Tor developers on April 13th, the change has been rolling out across Google services and threatens to disrupt (...)

#Google #VPN #censure #TOR

Whose Fake News Gets a Pass ? NYT Advocates Internet Censorship
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/whose-fake-news-gets-a-pass-nyt-advocates-internet-censorship

In its lead editorial on Sunday, The New York Times decried what it deemed “The Digital Virus Called Fake News” and called for Internet censorship to counter this alleged problem, taking...

NYT Advocates Internet Censorship
The New York Times wants a system of censorship for the Internet to block what it calls “fake news,” but the Times ignores its own record of publishing “fake news,” reports Robert Parry.
▻https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/20/nyt-advocates-internet-censorship

The simple reality is that lots of dubious accusations get flung around during the heat of a campaign – nothing new there – and it is always a challenge for professional journalists to swat them down the best we can. What’s different now is that the Times envisions some structure (or algorithm) for eliminating what it calls “fake news.”

But, with a stunning lack of self-awareness, the Times fails to acknowledge the many times that it has published “fake news,” such as reporting in 2002 that Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes meant that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program; its bogus analysis tracing the firing location of a Syrian sarin-laden rocket in 2013 back to a Syrian military base that turned out to be four times outside the rocket’s range; or its publication of photos supposedly showing Russian soldiers inside Russia and then inside Ukraine in 2014 when it turned out that the “inside-Russia” photo was also taken inside Ukraine, destroying the premise of the story.

These are just three examples among many of the Times publishing “fake news” – and all three appeared on Page One before being grudgingly or partially retracted, usually far inside the newspaper under opaque headlines so most readers wouldn’t notice. Much of the Times’ “fake news” continued to reverberate in support of U.S. government propaganda even after the partial retractions.

So, should Zuckerberg prevent Facebook users from circulating New York Times stories? Obviously, the Times would not favor that solution to the problem of “fake news.” Instead, the Times expects to be one of the arbiters deciding which Internet outlets get banned and which ones get gold seals of approval.

#new_york_times #fake

“Understanding Internet Censorship Policy: The Case of Greece” by Vasilis Ververis, George Kargiotakis, Arturo Filastò, Benjamin Fabian and Afentoulis Alexandros

▻https://www.usenix.org/conference/foci15/workshop-program/presentation/ververis
▻https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/foci15/foci15-paper-ververis-update.pdf

A very good survey of the state of #Internet_censorship in one country, #Greece. Censorship is done against atheists, gamblers and other categories. Using local probes, they show the extent of censorship, whether it is by lying DNS, IP blocking or HTTP redirection.

#censorship

Google’s chairman wants algorithms to censor the internet for hate speech
▻http://qz.com/568580/googles-chairman-wants-algorithms-to-censor-the-internet-for-hate-speech

In an op-ed for The New York Times (paywall), Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, inserted himself directly into the middle of a heated debate about the line between fighting terrorism’s online reach and internet censorship. “It’s our responsibility to demonstrate that stability and free expression go hand in hand,” he writes. “We should build tools to help de-escalate tensions on social media—sort of like spell-checkers, but for hate and harassment.” His words came just after (...) #Google #algorithme #censure #anti-terrorisme

How Internet censorship protects Iranian businesses - Al-Monitor : the Pulse of the Middle East
▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/11/iran-filtering-policies.html#

Passionnant, à tous points de vue.

Fear of political unrest has long been stated as the main reason for the government’s Internet censorship policy. Yet, while political concerns remain significant, they no longer constitute the main motivation for restricting access to some websites. Tech-savvy young Iranians bypass censorship on a daily basis using a variety of anti-filtering technologies. Indeed, the key motivation for the Iranian authorities’ restrictive Internet policy is economic in nature. These days, social media sites and the Internet in general are increasingly being looked at through an economic lens in Iran. This shift is the result of two main developments: first; the government’s relative success with containing security risks presented by the web, and second, an increasing realization of the business potential of the Internet — including social media.

#iran #tic_arabes

Africa’s Worst New Internet Censorship Law Could be Coming to South Africa | Electronic Frontier Foundation
▻https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/africas-worst-new-internet-censorship-law-could-be-coming-south-africa

Any online platform can be ordered to take down any content distributed online that the Board may deem to be potentially harmful and disturbing.

#censure #internet #afrique_du_sud

#turkey submits #Internet #Censorship and monitoring bill
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/turkey-submits-internet-censorship-and-monitoring-bill

The Turkish government has moved to impose strict controls on the Internet by monitoring the activities of online users and blocking certain keywords, a parliamentary source said on Thursday. A bill has been submitted to parliament in the latest in a string of government moves testing freedom of expression in the aspiring EU member state. The proposed legislation will allow the authorities to block keywords deemed problematic and limit access to video-sharing websites that include them, the source said. read more

#Spying #surveillance #Top_News

Aaron Swartz commits suicide
►http://tech.mit.edu/V132/N61/swartz.html
Via twitter@lambda #internet #jugement

he then worked for Avaaz Foundation, a nonprofit “global web movement to bring people-powered politics to decision-making everywhere.” (...) The accomplished Swartz co-authored the now widely-used RSS 1.0 specification at age 14, founded Infogami which later merged with the popular social news site reddit, and completed a fellowship at Harvard’s Ethics Center Lab on Institutional Corruption. In 2010, he founded DemandProgress.org, a “campaign against the Internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA.”

Touchée et navrée...

#Kazakhstan upgrades censorship to deep packet inspection | The #Tor Blog
►https://blog.torproject.org/blog/kazakhstan-upgrades-censorship-deep-packet-inspection

In December 2011 we were aware of Kazakhstan increasing Internet censorship in response to some unrest and protests in Zhanaozen in the west. (...)
Luckily, due to our recent experience with #Iran we have an answer for people: use obfsproxy. Obfsproxy continues to work in Kazakhstan, as well as Iran. In fact, it works in any country where dpi is used to censor citizens’ access to the #Internet.

#DPI #censure

#Tor's latest project helps #Iran get back online despite new #Internet censorship regime
►http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/02/tors-latest-project-helps-iran-get-back-online-amidst-internet-censorsh

http://static.arstechnica.net/assets/2012/02/screen_shot_2012-02-13_at_12_14_25_pm-4f39529-intro-thumb-640xauto-30234.png

between Feb. 8 and Feb. 9, connections dropped from about 50,000 to fewer than 20,000, and plummeted to nearly zero by Friday, Feb. 10.

The dramatic change proved the prediction of Tor project member Jacob Appelbaum distressingly accurate. Last week, as reports of the Iranian crackdown began circulating, he warned, "It’s likely that more than ~50,000 - ~60,000 Tor users may drop offline." But Appelbaum and his fellow Tor project members had a plan: a new obfuscated bridge (obfsproxy) that makes encrypted traffic appear to be regular traffic. Obfsproxy was an “ace up our sleeve,” as Appelbaum described it, and Tor put it into action over the past few days

#censure

The Past, Present and Future of Internet Censorship - YouTube
►http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spapXznZf4I&feature=youtu.be&a

Stop ACTA: why the global big brother of internet censorship must be crushed | Death and Taxes
►http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/175737/stop-acta-why-the-global-big-brother-of-internet-censorship-must-b

Today, ACTA is up for its first debate in the European Union Parliament, brought to the floor by Jan Zahradil, a conservative Czech with Euroskeptic views—a rather ironic choice to bring ACTA to the EU floor given the treaty’s vast international scope.

2011: Piracy Wars and Internet Censorship | TorrentFreak
►http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-wars-and-internet-censorship-111231

January

After pressure from the entertainment industries, Google started to censor piracy-related keywords from its instant and autocomplete services. Keywords such as ‘torrent,’ ‘BitTorrent’ and ‘RapidShare’ were excluded from the start, and later in the year Google added a wide range of new terms including ‘The Pirate Bay.’

Google pirate bayDespite these efforts the RIAA remained dissatisfied, patronizing the search engine with a could-do-much-better “Report Card” in December.

Insight into Syria: Part 3/3: Internet Communication and Worldwide Protest Movement | KheOps
►http://reflets.info/insight-into-syria-part-33-internet-communication-and-worldwide-protest-mo

After having seen a picture of the Syrian intelligence organization and methods as well as having tried to assess the probability of a civil war and what would be its consequences, this last part of the interview focuses on giving a few elements about how people tend to react to Internet censorship and monitoring in the country. As a reminder, Telecomix recently released 54GB of log files produced by BlueCoat SG-9000 filtering proxies located in Syria and managed by the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment in Damascus. Those devices are devoted to filtering and monitoring nearly the whole country’s HTTP traffic, helping authorities to track opponents. Devices from the German company Fortinet are also used to perform protocol-based filtering, which is a technique that comes under Deep Packet Inspect methods and which is used within the Intrusion Prevetion System. It allows to block many VPN protocols such as PPTP, L2TP and OpenVPN in Syria, making secure communications extremely difficult to achieve.

Interview with Arundhati Roy — New Internationalist
►http://www.newint.org/columns/2011/09/01/interview-with-arundhati-roy

I think overt censorship is slated to become a big problem in the near future. Internet censorship, surveillance, the project of the electronic UID (Unique Identity card)… ominous. Imagine a government that cannot provide food or water to its people, a government whose policies have created a population of 800 million people who live on less than 20 rupees [about 45 US cents] a day, a country which has the largest number of malnourished children in the world, which has, as a major priority, the desire to distribute UID cards to all of its citizens.

The UID is a corporate scam which funnels billions of dollars into the IT sector. To me, it is one of the most serious transgressions that is on the cards. It is nothing more than an administrative tool in the hands of a police state.

Interview with Arundhati Roy — New Internationalist
►http://www.newint.org/columns/2011/09/01/interview-with-arundhati-roy

#Internet censorship, surveillance, the project of the electronic UID (Unique Identity card)… ominous. Imagine a government that cannot provide food or water to its people, a government whose policies have created a population of 800 million people who live on less than 20 rupees [about 45 US cents] a day, a country which has the largest number of malnourished children in the world, which has, as a major priority, the desire to distribute UID cards to all of its citizens.

#censure #fichage #inde

http://www.newint.org/columns/2011/08/25/445-44-roy.jpg

Banned from Google+, Anonymous creates Anonplus
►http://www.techspot.com/news/44721-banned-from-google-anonymous-creates-anonplus.html

Google has reportedly banned a handful of Anonymous members from Google+ (it’s not exactly clear how many accounts were shut down). The hacktivist group likened Google’s actions to the stories of activists being banned from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, as well as governments blocking various websites using Internet censorship tools. As a result, Anonymous has decided to create its own social network: Anonplus, located at anonplus.com.

#anonymous #googleplus

Uncle Sam has $30M to bypass Chinese, Iranian ’Net #filters
►http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/uncle-sam-has-30m-to-bypass-chinese-iranian-net-filters.ars

Need to get around a Chinese government #firewall? Burning to smuggle your samizdat writings past Iranian Internet censorship? Hoping to blog with impunity in Burma? Uncle Sam wants to help. The US government has a $30 million pot of money to spend on “Internet freedom” programs around the world, and it’s not afraid to make a few enemies.

#China #Internet #Burma #Iran #US #WikiLeaks (ah non, pas #Wikileaks)