great firewall - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/great firewall en Copyright 2012 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:45:03 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.35-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Blogger Disappeared in China: This Week in Online Tyranny china_flag.jpgXu Zhiyong disappeared in Beijing. The lawyer and blogger (PDF) disappeared last Friday, telling friends he was being "taken away to the suburbs." He was seen with unidentified men.

He may be facing a resuscitation of tax charges he saw levied against him in 2009. He is one of many bloggers and activists detained and disappeared in the wake of an abortive "Jasmine Revolution" inspired by the Arab Spring.

]]> Burma sees even more surveillance with new civilian president. After promising to "respect the role of the media," Burma's new president, Thein Sein, has continued the Burmese junta's tradition of severe restriction of speech and harassment of journalists, activists and bloggers. New rules tightening restrictions on the already-restricted Internet have come into place, "including a requirement (of Internet cafes) to keep the personal data of all their clients along with a record of all the websites they visit, and make it available to the authorities."

Further restrictions include "a ban on the use of portable hard disks, USB flash drives and CDs in Internet cafés, and a ban on the use of Internet telephony (VoIP) services to call abroad."

us flag.gifU.S. DOJ withholds surveillance law memo.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit against the Department of Justice to force "the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight."

The aftermath of 9-11 has seen a great many laws introduced, rules rewritten and policies changed to the detriment of individual liberties.

shoe.jpgGreat Firewall founder attacked.

Chinese technologist Fang Binxing is credited as the father of the Great Firewall of China, the ring of blocks and filters that keeps the Internet in that country under the political control of the ruling regime. Known as the "Golden Shield" in Chinese, is was begun as a way to seize economic opportunities for the country without sacrificing Communist Party control.

Fang, the president of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, was speaking at Wuhan University in China's Hubei province when he was pelted with an egg (which missed) and a shoe (which did not).

facebook150.jpgFacebook traffic declines in Middle East.

Adoption of Facebook by citizens of the Middle East started increasing prior to the Arab Spring. But in the wake of the protests, that number spiked upward dramatically. This month, however, the region "has lost thousands if not hundreds of thousands of users in some key countries," according to Inside Facebook.

Of the nineteen Middle Eastern countries they track, seven have declined over the last month, some precipitously.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blogger_disappeared_in_china_this_week_in_online_t.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blogger_disappeared_in_china_this_week_in_online_t.php TWiOT Fri, 27 May 2011 22:01:00 -0800 Curt Hopkins China Blocks Access to Twitter, Flickr, Bing china_blocked_logo_jun09.pngIn preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4th, China has started to block a number of web sites, including Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, Hotmail, and Microsoft's new search engine Bing. Tech-savvy Internet users in China, of course, know how to circumvent the Great Firewall, but for the large majority of Chinese Internet users, these sites will remain blocked for the foreseeable future. In addition to these high-profile sites, the Guardian also reports that the Great Firewall now also blocks access to more than 6,000 online forums affiliated with colleges and universities.

]]> In March, China also blocked access to Google's YouTube. As the Chinese government does not seem to release a list of blocked sites, it is hard to find an exact number for how many sites are currently blocked, though there are a number of tools that allow you to check whether a given site has been blocked. The last time the Great Firewall made the news was in the run-up to the Olympics, where Western reporters were supposed to have full access to the Internet, but found that some sites were still blocked.

Sadly, there is also some evidence that while the Chinese government is still keenly aware of the events of June 4th 1989, a large number of young Chinese know very little about the event.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/china_blocks_access_to_twitter_flickr_bing.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/china_blocks_access_to_twitter_flickr_bing.php News Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:02:56 -0800 Frederic Lardinois