Posts tagged Censorship at Switched

Posts with tag censorship

51 Places You're Not Supposed to See on Google Maps

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 16th 2008 at 7:01PM

Google Maps may be great for sightseeing in areas of the world to remote, dangerous, or expensive for you to visit, and even better for creepily checking in on the dwellings of friends and family, but there are a few places that have been taken off of the service.

Governments have had military installations removed, residents have had homes and entire towns cleared from the site, and sites of a sensitive nature (such as nuclear power stations) are missing for security reasons. Even some colleges such as MIT and SUNY Stonybrook are blurred out to obscure the location of research laboratories. There are some odd entries as well, such as the Playland Amusement Park in Rye, NY and the the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands.

All told, the site IT Security has found 51 separate instances of locations being removed from Google Maps and Google Earth. You'll find the full list after the break. [Source: IT Security]

Gallery: Google Maps Censored

Continue reading 51 Places You're Not Supposed to See on Google Maps

Record High Blogger Arrests in 2007

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 18th 2008 at 2:10PM

As blogs have become more powerful and prominent as sources of political information and dissent, governments have increased their crackdown on the online outlets of opinion and news. According to the World Information Access (WIA) report, 64 bloggers have been arrested since 2003, but 2007 saw the number of bloggers arrested triple from the previous year. Most of the bloggers arrested have been in China, Iran, and Egypt. The arrests usually lead to jail time, with the average sentence handed down for blogging being 15 months.

The number of bloggers arrested is hard to measure due to the difficulty in confirming identities and that arrests even took place at all in these highly secretive nations. WIA expects the number of arrests of bloggers to continue to increase in 2008 as political uncertainty looms in China and Pakistan and as blogs become even more ubiquitous. [Source: BBC]

Teen Kicked Off Student Council for "Douchebag" Blog Post

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jun 3rd 2008 at 8:32AM

Blog posts and social networking sites have cost people jobs, relationships, and freedom. But it's rare that high school students get blatantly censored and reprimanded for using for using foul language on said online outlets outside of school.

Avery Doninger was the class secretary at Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington, Connecticut, but was barred for running for re-election her senior year after she referred to school officials as "douchebags" in posting on her personal blog.

The trouble began when the school repeatedly delayed a battle of the bands the student government had organized. After being rescheduled twice already, the school wanted to reschedule again because a particular teacher could not make the event to work the lighting equipment. When the student government suggested hiring a professional or letting a parent work the equipment, the school balked.

Continue reading Teen Kicked Off Student Council for "Douchebag" Blog Post

Singapore Bans Two YouTube-Like Adult Sites

by Peter Mychalcewycz, posted May 27th 2008 at 7:29AM

Singapore has banned two YouTube-like file sharing porn sites in what the government is calling a "symbolic statement."

The two sites, Youporn and Redtube, have been added to a list of 100 "mass objectionable" Web sites that the government finds especially accessible and therefore especially harmful to children. The sites stream home-made porn as soon as the link is clicked upon.

The intent here is clear, but what is not clear is what effect the government believes this will have, seeing as how there are literally millions of pornographic Web sites readily available to anyone with an Internet connection. No matter how quickly sites are banned, there is always a new site ready to take its place. Publicized political moves have always favored style over substance, so perhaps this is just par for the course.

Ah politics. Big talk, little impact, and a host of national ills that politicians choose to paper over with painfully ineffective political dribble. [Source: Reuters]

China Closing Down All Non-Earthquake-Covering Web Sites and TV Shows

by Evan Shamoon, posted May 20th 2008 at 12:17PM

Chinese media mavens, get ready to be kinda bored: According Marc van der Chijs, CEO of Spill Group Asia and co-founder of Todou.com, the Chinese government has issued orders that all entertainment Web sites and regular television programming be shut down for the next three days. Apparently, only Web sites and television stations covering the country's recent earthquake will be allowed to remain live.

The news was leaked yesterday by van der Chijs via social messaging Web site, Twitter. Probably gonna make for some depressing television watching (there's really so much earthquake damage one can watch), but you can't really argue with respect. [Source: Blourge]

China Will Block Internet During Olympics, But Will Go Easy On Pirates

by Tim Stevens, posted May 8th 2008 at 10:50AM

China Will Block Internet During Olympics, Not Pirates

Despite having the highest number of online users in the world, China is still one of the most strict censors of the Internet. In the build-up to the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer, the nation has been talking about the easy availability of Internet access for the media covering the games, but now it's backing away from pledges of "complete freedom," indicating that some sites will continue to be censored.

So, the media may find themselves blocked from some sites while in the country, but, in an ironic twist, the Chinese government is also saying that it's unable to block those selling Olympic-themed memorabilia. Officials have complained about seeing vendors openly selling knockoff shirts and mascots (along with pirated copies of Hollywood movies and the like) on street corners in Beijing. The government has fined a number of them recently, but is indicating it is powerless to stop it completely.

So, between the censorship and bionic swimming suits, it's certainly shaping up to be an interesting Olympics, and we haven't even started talking about the competitors yet! [Source: Reuters]

Uncensored Cuban Blogs Speak Out

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Apr 28th 2008 at 3:03PM

Yoani Sanchez, dressed as a tourist in her own country, ducks into posh hotels that provide Internet access for foreign travelers on a regular basis, just so she can spend large chunks of her modest paycheck to post complaints about the Cuban government on her blog. Her blog, Generation Y, is widely read both in Cuba and abroad and has earned her many fans. Sanchez posts under her real name, something that just 10 short years ago would have been unthinkable and would have guaranteed her arrest.

Thanks to being granted the right to own personal computers one month ago, younger generations of Cubans are becoming more vocal in their opposition to government policies and less afraid to openly state their opinions. Sites such as Sin EVAsion and Petrosalvaje also feature Cubans voicing opposition to the government under their real names.

While the Cuban government has yet to try and arrest the authors and owners of these Web sites ,it is still dangerous for them to operate. These brave Cubans risk arrest every day by illegally connecting to the Internet and posting anti-government speech. [Source: AP/AOL News, via USA Today]

Russian Prosecutor's Office Considering Internet Censorship

by Evan Shamoon, posted Apr 24th 2008 at 10:46AM

In yet another not-entirely-unexpected grasp at media censorship, the Russian government wants its tough anti-extremism laws to be applied to the Internet. The story is being reported by state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, and is fueling the fears of growing media censorship in the country.

The prosecutors office has proposed a legal amendment that would bring the Internet under the same rules as printed media, Vyacheslav Sizov, a top official at the prosecutor general's office told the paper.

Under current laws, newspapers deemed "in court" to have published extremist material can be shut down by the government. The new proposal demands that any site hosting extremist material be blocked by providers in Russia "within a month," said Sizov, or face similar repercussions.

Thus far, the Internet has been relatively free in Russia, where almost all television and many newspapers are under formal or unofficial government control.

"It is a worry whenever the government tries to change any law," Oleg Panfilov, director of the Centre of Journalism in Extreme Situations, told AFP. "It is difficult to find anyone who is not against extremism but it depends on how the law is used. The government uses (it) selectively."

You might recall that the news website www.gazeta.ru was warned for extremism last year after it wrote about cartoons that satirised the prophet Mohammed.

Makes the US media seem almost ... legitimate? Russia needs its own version of the Daily Show. [Source: AFP]

College Student Twitters His Way Out of Egyptian Jail

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Apr 16th 2008 at 8:17PM

Journalism Student Arrested in Egypt Twitters his Way to Freedom

We've heard the micro-blogging service Twitter called a lot of things -- everything from fun and indispensable, to frivolous and stupid. Now, you can add lifesaver to the mix. At least one man, James Buck, can thank Twitter for his freedom after being picked up, along with his interpreter Mohammed Salah Ahmed Maree, by Egyptian authorities while taking pictures of a demonstration.

Buck, a U.C. Berkeley graduate student of journalism, managed to type out a simple one word message -- "Arrested" -- to his network of followers on Twitter. Friends, fellow students and journalists quickly sprang into action by contacting U.C. Berkeley, the U.S. embassy in Egypt, the Associated Press, and other media outlets. The next da, Buck walked out of jail a free man with a U.C. Berkeley hired lawyer at his side and the U.S. embassy on the phone.

Buck is now spearheading an effort to free his interpreter Maree and other other imprisoned journalists in Egypt by drawing more media attention to the struggles against censorship in the Middle East through his writing, and, of course Twittering. [Source: Mercury News]

Internet Limitations Rankle Cubans, Information Still Gets Around

by Will Safer, posted Apr 1st 2008 at 11:56AM

A modern version of the "sneakernet" is alive and thriving in Cuba, where Internet access and an open online discourse is seriously limited by the government.

Case in point: an underground, informal network of Cuban citizens share Web video, articles and messages that most of view and share online by way of flash drives, which they use to manually transfer data to one another, bypassing the restricted cyberspace, putting banned information directly into each other's hands.

(Sneakernet is the term many Web users have used for years now to describe physically carrying files from one place to another on solid state memory cards.)

In a particularly interesting case, a Cuban computer science student took a government official to task over the restrictions to information and travel imposed on citizens of the island nation. While the exchange, which was recorded on video, could not be sent around on YouTube or MySpace the way it is in free nations, copies have been making there way around on flash drives carried from place to place by hand. A copy eventually made its way out to CNN and the BBC.

The video also shows the official struggling to explain everything from travel restrictions to why Cubans can't go to the resorts based in their country.

From The Raw Feed.

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China Blocks YouTube Access Over Tibet Protest Videos

by Will Safer, posted Mar 17th 2008 at 1:26PM

The flag of the People's Republic of China

The free flow of information is one of the basic rights those in open societies claim as an advantage over those who live in closed societies, and one right many Web surfers may take for granted. Case in point: if you lived in China right now, you'd find your access to YouTube denied as that country attempts to block its sizable population from viewing videos of recent demonstrations in Tibet's capital city of Lhasa.

China blocked access to the popular video site over the weekend as video images captured on cell phone cameras were posted of people protesting the Chinese government's control over the smaller Asian country.

While people around the world have been following the news of the Tibetan protests, Internet users in China, who number more than 210 million, have found only a blank page when they try to call up YouTube on their browsers. While China does encourage its people to use the internet for education and information exchange, there is also a fair amount of censorship in place. At its most basic level, pornography is blocked but also images and information that runs counter to government policy can also find itself beyond the reach of most Chinese citizens.

China has been trying to balance control with the recognized need for growth of the online industry. The country briefly sought to limit online video sharing to only state-owned companies but concern over stifling a valuable and growing industry moved the government to let private companies continue their operations – with strict guidelines, however, over content.

From AOL Money.

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Pakistan Bans, Then Breaks YouTube

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 25th 2008 at 5:15PM

Pakistan has become the latest in a long list of countries that have banned the video sharing site YouTube. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority told the country's Internet Service Provicers (ISPs) that the site will be blocked until further notice due to content deemed offensive to Islam, though they would not name the specific content that was deemed offensive.

Countries such as Turkey, Thailand, and Morocco have all blocked the site at one point or another for hosting videos deemed offensive to the nations' leaders and government.

This would be worth noting even if the story ended here, but there's more....The government blocks the site by redirecting all traffic from within Pakistan intended for YouTube to a different Web site. However, likely due to a careless error by a Pakistani engineer, YouTube was blocked around the globe for two hours yesterday.

Google immediately contacted the Pakistani government, and access to the site was quickly restored. The government is investigating the cause behind the outage.

From BBC and Wired

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Court Shuts Down Whistleblower Site

by Tim Stevens, posted Feb 20th 2008 at 10:11AM

Nobody likes a snitch, but the whistleblower, someone who exposes corruption, is often held in quite high regard. There's a fine line between the two types of tattletales, but most everyone is almost always happy to see shady and illegal back room dealings exposed.

Everyone, it seems, except the American courts. The U.S. Supreme Court made exposing misdeeds a little more dangerous last year when it ruled that whistleblowing employees had no protection against retaliation from employers. Now, a California District Court judge has ordered the online anonymous whistleblowing site, Wikileaks.org, to shut down.

Wikileaks, which is currently available at the address Wikileaks.be, launched in December of 2006 as a place for the anonymous posting of information by whistleblowers. It was responsible for the revealing of the controversial "Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta" at Guantanamo Bay, which exposed some potential civil rights violations. The site hosts thousands of other posted documents, which range from supposed e-mails from U.S. Ambassadors to videos showing a nuclear accident in Japan.

Last week's ruling from the California judge is in response to a lawsuit by the Julius Baer Group, a Swiss bank that was alleged to be involved in money laundering. The allegations were backed up by documents posted -- illegally, according to the bank -- to Wikileaks. The judge ruled that the Wikileaks.org domain name could no longer be renewed or resolved.

Given that the site is mirrored in many countries around the world with suffixes besides ".org," however, it's likely that Wikileaks won't be affected too much by this immediate ruling. All that said, we expect a more concerted effort against this site in the not too distant future, given that the site's main purpose of exposing secrets more less always creates enemies.

From Computerworld and Wikipedia

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Lawyer Blames Video Games for NIU Shootings

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 19th 2008 at 2:23PM

Few things makes us more angry than taking advantage of tragedies to push personal and political agendas, especially when when that agenda lacks things like supporting evidence... or logic.

Jack Thompson, a self-described Christian conservative and Republican (which is an insult to Christian conservative Republicans everywhere), has made a career of crusading against so-called obscenity and violence in media such as rap music and video games.

His latest rant came on Fox News about the Northern Illinois University shooting and its connection to the first person shooter 'Counter Strike.' The Fox News interview is shameless on so many levels. Thompson refers to video games as simulators for practicing massacres, implies that he predicted the NIU shooting in a book he wrote (plug, plug), and he referred to a Harvard study suggesting that people are likely to copycat behavior in video games. He failed to mention that the killer spent time in a psychiatric institution or that he recently decided to stop taking his prescribed anti-depressants.

Let's take Thompson's logic and apply it elsewhere. According to him every school shooter has played video games, therefore video games are the cause of school shootings. The Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11th attacks were perpetrated by morally and socially conservative religious fundamentalists, so perhaps Thompson is a potential terrorist -- let's ship him to Gitmo. We still water-board don't we?

From DailyTech

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Proposed Law Requires Age Verification on Public Wi-Fi Networks

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Feb 7th 2008 at 3:27PM

Utah Wants Age Verification on Public Wi-Fi Networks

We all know there's a lot of questionable content online, most notably pornography, and keeping kids from that content is a big priority for parents and social conservative groups everywhere. The question is how to do it. A Utah-based non-profit teamed up with a member of the State's House of Representatives to introduce a bill that would make pornography inaccessible at public Wi-Fi hot-spots with out age verification.

The bill would place responsibility on the wireless providers to verify age or face stiff fines -- even private citizens who have open access in their homes are susceptible to these fines. In other words, if a child next door leeches off your Wi-Fi network and accesses pornography through it, you could be fined $1,000.

XMission, a Salt Lake City based Wi-Fi provider has estimated that it would cost $5,000 per month to implement the verification process. Placing the burden of the verification process on the provider is considered unfair by many. If kids are dedicated enough, they'll always find a way around these road-blocks, and in this case it would be very easy since the specifics of the blockage would only affect sites hosted in the U.S. In our opinion, the best solution is for parents to actually parent and teach their children what is appropriate and apply the right amount of supervision to keep their kids out of trouble.

From ArsTechnica

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51 Places You're Not Supposed to See on Google Maps

Gallery: Google Maps Censored

Record High Blogger Arrests in 2007

Teen Kicked Off Student Council for "Douchebag" Blog Post

Singapore Bans Two YouTube-Like Adult Sites

China Closing Down All Non-Earthquake-Covering Web Sites and TV Shows

China Will Block Internet During Olympics, But Will Go Easy On Pirates

Uncensored Cuban Blogs Speak Out

Russian Prosecutor's Office Considering Internet Censorship

College Student Twitters His Way Out of Egyptian Jail

Internet Limitations Rankle Cubans, Information Still Gets Around

China Blocks YouTube Access Over Tibet Protest Videos

Pakistan Bans, Then Breaks YouTube

Court Shuts Down Whistleblower Site

Lawyer Blames Video Games for NIU Shootings

Proposed Law Requires Age Verification on Public Wi-Fi Networks

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