Is China's interest in Facebook a simply a government-sponsored group of venture capitalists looking to get a piece of the upcoming Facebook IPO or is there something more complicated at work behind the scenes?

Australia, on the other hand, has no such compunction. They've implemented their filtering system - oh, it's for child porn, so don't worry. One of the parties to this agreement, the Australian ISP Telestra, almost backed out, because of LulzSec. But now that all hackers have gone away for ever, they're in like Flynn!

Cisco to build China's surveillance system. Cisco and other Western companies are gleefully serving China's new program to put up half a million 24-hour video cameras in public places around the southern city of Chongqing. In addition to being a major industrial and military hub, Chongqing is also a center for Chinese cyberattacks and the first of the country's "cloud cities."

Maybe I'll print up some t-shirts. "Don't tell my mom I work for Cisco. I told her I was playing piano in a whorehouse."

Taiwan fines blogger $7K for restaurant reviews. Here's my favorite part: "The court in Taichung city stated that her comment was not based upon objective fact and hence defamatory." Let's translate. In Taiwan, an opinion is a lie. Also, freedom is slavery.

China confiscates Swedish student's passport for blog post. Look at you, China. It's really your week. Sven Englund posted an open letter to China's president Hu Jintao on his blog. He had planned to return to Sweden this month. But now he's stranded in China indefinitely.

Tunisia blog sued. Nawaat.org, a blog that covered the Jasmine Revolution in great detail, is being sued in French court. The blog is being "threatened with legal action by Antoine Sfeir, a journalist and academic with dual French and Lebanese nationality, over a 20 March article by Lebanese journalist René Naba about the 'Ben Ali dictatorship's Lebanese sycophants.'" Another knock against a post-revolution Tunisia that seems to be slowly but surely returning to Internet censorship.

Apple blocks outgoing emails. Apple loves to censor things, up to and including Ulysses and the ThirdIntifada app. Apple refuses to say what exactly it is filtering in terms of email. The Cult of Mac tested a number of messages, including one which wished for more freedom for those in the Arab Uprising. It was blocked on the Apple servers.

U.S. intelligence officials recommend separate Internet. Well, it may not be a "halal" Internet, but it looks like the separate structure recommended by a bunch of American intelligence folks will be about as free.

As PopSci reports, "Several lawmakers and the current Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander are toying with the notion of creating a 'secure' domain where Fourth Amendment rights to privacy are voluntarily foregone in order to keep that corner of the Internet free of cyber criminals." What was that one thing that one guy said? "Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." He was probably a hippy.

Pantheon photo by Ville Miettinen, mission accomplished photo via Wikimedia Commons

Now, Web technologies are allowing the peoples in question to dynamically capture and pass on the wisdom and experiences of their culture as a whole and those of their elders in particular. Here are two particularly exciting examples of how technology has been used in Australia to achieve these goals.

The Ara Irititja Project.

"The aim of Ara Irititja is to bring back home materials of cultural and historical significance to Anangu. These include photographs, films, sound recordings and documents. Ara Irititja has designed a purpose-built computer archive that digitally stores repatriated materials and other contemporary items."

It's a deep indicator of the importance of both culture and the technology that has been brought to bear in its service that the focus of the project is in building a cultural database accessible by all via the Web. The Anangu approach to melding the two is eye-opening.

"Anangu have managed complex cultural information systems for thousands of years, restricting access to some knowledge on the basis of seniority and gender. Ara Irititja has integrated these cultural priorities into the design of its digital archive."

What the Anangu are doing is so complex and multifarious that proper coverage of their efforts could easily fill a book. Chapters might include physical archiving, language preservation and teaching, gathering living voices, culturally-based software development, helping other groups make the transition to the Web, creating multimedia expressions of cultural concerns, exhibition creation and developing protocols for the sharing of information with outsiders. Of particular interest, I think, is the way the Anangu inflect their use of communications technologies to reflect their cultural values. In other words, technology remains a tool in their hands, not vice versa.

Mission Voices.

These oral histories were gathered in conjunction with the Koorie Heritage Trust. The Koorie are a people of New South Wales and Victoria, in the southeast of the country. The emphasis is information from and about "missions and reserves," the rough equivalent of "Indian reservations" in the United States. These reserves include Ebenezer, Lake Tyers, Coranderrk, Cummeragunja, Framlingham and Lake Condah.

According to the website, the human emphasis was on Australian Aboriginal elders.

"Elders were invited from across Victoria to be a part of the project. There are many more Elders across this state and country that have an important contribution to make with the telling of their story. This site is only representative of a section of the history of missions and reserves in Victoria and only some of the voices."

Readers can navigate the site by reserve or by subjects, such as spirituality, justice and living culture; or by, as the site itself puts it, "the land and the theme." From this context-building information, including video presentations, the visitor can drill down to individual voices, such as Uncle Jack, a Wotjobaluk and World War II vet.

Do your people use the Web to preserve and pass on their culture? Do you work on such a project? Or is there simply a project of that description from which you gained something by interacting? If so, please share it with us and your fellow readers in the comments.

Top photo from Ara Irititja | other illustrations and photos from Mission Voices | special thanks to @debrockstroh

Australia joins list of nations investigating Google. Australia announced it is officially investigating Google for its collection of personal information. The company used its Google Street View cars to map Wi-Fi locations but picked up personal information as well. Other countries investigating include the U.S., Germany, Italy, France and Canada.

Cuba and Vietnam infect Internet cafe computers. "Cybercafés in Havana will start using software called AVILA, designed to spy on which websites the users visit. This tool is a real trap to hunt Internet users. Since the past couple of years, this software application, whose main purpose is to capture the user's private information, has been installed in Internet access services of most of the Havana hotels." The software keeps external drives from being used as well. Vietnam has actually infected a popular software that allows the use of Vietnamese language typing with malware to monitor Internet use.

Venezuelan President indicts news website. Again. Hugo Chávez railed against a news website, Noticiero Digital, and the federal prosecutor immediately announced it would begin "proceedings" against the site. The site had reported on concerns by members of the military regarding Mr. Chávez's reign and was promptly accused of calling for a coup.

Photo of wall in abandoned Cuban school by Paul Keller

The social media company and the AFP have been going back and forth over the responsibility Australian law enforcement believes the company has in regards to local law enforcement.

Australian Federal Police High Tech Crime Centre assistant commissioner Neil Gaughan told Australia's iTnews that he had requested that Facebook hire a compliance officer, someone to serve as an "international law enforcement presence...in Australia, a point of contact" with the police. They are also being asked to install a button on the Australian version of the site that will allow users to report people to the police.

I'm slow to leap to Facebook's defense. But nobody should be shanghaied into this kind of nonsense. It's like "Crocodile Stasi." Private individuals and private companies are not available for deputation into law enforcement. They are required, in civilized society, merely to not break laws themselves.

Antony Loewenstein, independent journalist and author of The Blogging Revolution, says that police authorities have the right to enforce local laws to ensure illegal acts are not promoted or distributed online but there are limits.

"There is a growing and worrying trend across the Western world to monitor and censor material that supposedly offends decency or societal standards. We shouldn't tolerate something like child pornography being shared across the world but the so-called crime of 'offending' people or groups is something a real democracy should encourage."

Orwell may have been British but his nightmares must have wintered in Melbourne. It is especially creepy since, among the major industrial powers, Australia has arguably the worst reputation when it comes to civil rights vs. security.

AFP photo by Publik15

This new position requires Southall live, swim, and play every day, then record his adventures for the world via blogs, photos, video updates and media interviews. Not bad for AUD $150,000 and six months worth of work.

The successful candidate, Tourism Queensland CEO Anthony Hayes said, would be "someone who can capture and hold world attention."

While Southall's application video (embedded below) shows that he certainly can grab attention, and the publicity stunt dreamed up by Tourism Queensland has certainly been successful in giving Australian tourism a global profile, one question remains: Can the social Web interest translate into future tourism dollars for Australia - and more specifically Queensland? According to Hayes, "that's the million dollar question."

According to Hitwise, 38% of the top 50 searches for 'twitter' in Australia include the name of a celebrity. Lindsay Lohan leads the charge, followed by Ashton Kutcher, Miley Cyrus, and Australia's own Hugh Jackman. While Kutcher's much publicized race to 1 million followers increased Twitter's share of daily visits in Australia by 10.6%, Oprah's first tweet only registered a 2.46% increase

Twitter is also seeing similar growth in other Asia Pacific markets. In New Zealand, the official home of RWW, Twitter's share of daily visits increased 305% in 2009, and it is now the 49th most visited web site there, and its growth rate in Singapore is comparable. Only Hong Kong is lagging far behind these other markets.

Twitter is Sticky

One interesting phenomenon about Twitter is that new users tend to stay on the service. In Australia, according to Hitwise, the single largest spike in visits came one day after the Queensland Election in March, and interestingly, Hitwise did not record a drop in numbers since then. This bodes well for Twitter, which, thanks to the hype around Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher, was able to pick up a lot of new users who typically wouldn't have been too interested in joining Twitter.

eBay argued that these changes will lessen the likelihood of "bad buyer experiences" by increasing trust and security between buyers and sellers. But competitors, including Google (allegedly), Paymate, eWay, Qpay, BPAY, American Express, and a handful of eBay seller organizations and Australian banks have lodged counter arguments with the ACCC.

About individual 650 eBay users also submit counters to the ACCC. According to the Comission, "The overwhelming majority of these submissions were opposed to the notified conduct and raised concerns regarding restriction of choice, increased fees and issues associated with PayPal's security, dispute resolution and customer service."

In the end, the ACCC decided that the proposed eBay TOS changes would have "the effect of substantially lessening competition in the market in which PayPal operates" and likely result in "reduced choice for consumers, higher transactions costs and reduced innovation in online payment systems." Therefore, the ACCC released a draft notice denying eBay's request. However, this isn't necessarily the end of the issue. Under ACCC rules, eBay has the right to request a public conference at which all interested parties may speak their case to the ACCC, after which the Commission may reconsider their ruling.

For now, though, PayPal will not be the only option for eBay users in Australia -- and for that, sellers are mostly very happy. eBay's seller forums are this morning filled with threads of almost unanimously happy sellers cheering on the initial ACCC ruling and musing over what effect it might have on governments in other countries where eBay operates.