Archive for Freedoms
Author: Dave Lewis
October 15, 2007 at 3:42 pm · Filed under Freedoms, Politics
You think you have it bad when you high speed is down for an hour? Try on the Chinese surfing experience on for size.
From CNN:
At first, Liu Xiaoyuan just fumed when his online journal postings disappeared with no explanation. Then he decided to do something few if any of China’s censored bloggers had tried. He sued his service provider.
“Each time I would see one of my entries blocked, I’d feel so furious and indignant,” said Liu, a 43-year-old Beijing lawyer. “It was just so disrespectful.”
Liu’s frustration is hardly unique. For China’s 162 million Web users, surfing the Internet can be like running an obstacle course with blocked Web sites, partial search results, and posts disappearing at every turn.
Blog entries like Liu’s, which mused on sensitive topics such as the death penalty, corruption and legal reform, are often automatically rejected if they trigger a keyword filter. Sometimes, they’re deleted by human censors employed by Internet companies.
In the lead-up to the sensitive Communist Party Congress, which convenes Monday to approve top leaders who will serve under President Hu Jintao through 2012, authorities have been casting an even wider net than usual in their search for Web content they deem to be politically threatening or potentially destabilizing.
Freedom of speech is a bugger that way. (insert sarcastic tone)
Liquidmatrix is already blocked by Chinese censors.
Article Link
Tags: China Firewall, Chinese Censorship, China Internet Freedom
Author: Dave Lewis
September 30, 2007 at 9:15 pm · Filed under Crime, Freedoms, Military
During this difficult and disturbing time in Burma we find that bloggers are doing their part. The military junta that controls Burma controls through fear and intimidation. People have been gunned down in the street such as the Japanese journalist whose murder by a Burmese soldier was caught on film. In is incumbent on the rest of the world to raise a collective voice to help keep this story on the forefront so that our respective governments will take notice and apply pressure.
From Spiegel Online:
The world has been watching as thousands of saffron-robed monks march through the streets of the Burmese captial Yangon in protest against the repressive military regime — thanks to the images seeping out of the country via the Internet. While foreign journalists are being refused visas and are forced to wait in Bangkok hotels, ordinary Burmese are taking huge risks by taking photographs and blogging to communicate with the outside world.
As the protests enter their 10th day, the military regime seems to be ignoring international pleas for restraint and is instead continuing its crackdown on the protestors. In the early hours of Thursday morning, troops raided a number of monasteries and dragged away hundreds of monks. Just a few hours later, images of the blood-spattered floor of the monasteries were posted on Internet news sites across the world.
Article Link
Tags: Burma, Myanmar, Military Junta, Monk Protest, Burma Cyber Rebellion
Author: Dave Lewis
September 28, 2007 at 10:07 am · Filed under Freedoms, Military
Things continue to deteriorate in Myanmar. It appears that the public internet has been shut down by the military in an effort to stop pictures, stories and video from leaking out as they kill protesters in the street.
From Reuters:
Myanmar’s generals appeared to have cut public Internet access on Friday to prevent more videos, photographs and information getting out about their crackdown on the biggest protests against military rule in nearly 20 years.
Internet cafes were closed and the help desk at the main Internet service provider did not answer its telephones to explain why there was no access.
Citizen reporters have been at the forefront in informing the world of the protests against 45 years of military rule and declining living standards in Myanmar, also known as Burma.
They have even used the social networking site Facebook or hidden news in e-greetings cards. Networks of reporters for dissident news organisations have used the Internet to get stories and pictures out.
Correspondents who covered the last major uprising in Myanmar, in 1988, when the army killed an estimated 3,000 people, said a communications blackout was to be expected but would not stop the information flow.
“It may very well happen. It will just be a sudden shutdown,” said British journalist Dominic Faulder who was based in Bangkok during the 1988 uprising.
The widespread use of modern technology by protesters and dissident news networks is in stark contrast to 19 years ago, when reports of massive casualties from soldiers shooting into the crowds took days to leak out.
“They’re going to delay the message, but they’re not going to stop it. This time, there will be more pictures and they will come out,” Faulder said.
Article Link
Tags: Myanmar Oppression, Myanmar Internet, Myanmar Censorship
Author: Dave Lewis
August 28, 2007 at 9:35 pm · Filed under Freedoms
Yahoo has come out in defense of its actions in China.
From LA Times:
Yahoo Inc. on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the Internet company by civil rights advocates, arguing that it had become unfairly ensnared in a political debate over free speech in China.
The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company is fighting efforts to hold it accountable for the imprisonment and alleged torture of two Chinese citizens after it disclosed their identities to government officials. Yahoo says its Chinese subsidiaries did so to comply with the Chinese government’s rules.
Yahoo’s predicament illustrates the difficulty many Internet companies face in expanding to China. Essentially, they are information brokers in a country that tightly limits the spread of information.
“China is going to go from being a low-cost producer to being a demand engine for the global economy,” said Geoffrey Garrett, president of the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles. “American firms are finding that to sell in China, you need to be in China. . . . The Chinese government still controls the economy, [so] you have to play by the government’s rules.”
Read on.
Article Link
Tags: Yahoo Defends Actions, Chinese Law, Freedoms
Author: Dave Lewis
August 27, 2007 at 10:46 am · Filed under Freedoms, Legal Aspects
Thinking of grabbing an iPhone and unlocking to use it, well, anywhere other than on AT&T’s network? Well, it turns out that one shop, iphoneunlocking.com” has received a letter from the Nazgul AT&T’s legal team.
iphoneunlocking.com, a subsidiary of UniquePhones (www.uniquephones.com). was poised and ready to release remote software unlocking services for the iphone today at 12 noon EST. The sale of unlocking codes is on hold after the company received a telephone call from a Menlo Park, California, law firm at approximately 2:54 a.m. this morning (GMT).
After saying they were phoning on behalf of AT&T, the law firm presented issues such as copyright infringement and illegal software dissemination. Uniquephones is taking legal advice to ascertain whether AT&T was sending a warning shot or directly threatening legal action. The logistics of different continents as well as it being a weekend factors into how the situation develops.
I guess we may have to wait a little longer or buy a soldering gun.
Article Link
Tags: iPhone Unlocking, iPhone, AT&T Lawyer
Author: Dave Lewis
August 12, 2007 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Freedoms, Privacy
At least 20,000 police surveillance cameras are being installed along streets here in southern China and will soon be guided by sophisticated computer software from an American-financed company to recognize automatically the faces of police suspects and detect unusual activity.
Starting this month in a port neighborhood and then spreading across Shenzhen, a city of 12.4 million people, residency cards fitted with powerful computer chips programmed by the same company will be issued to most citizens.
Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Even personal reproductive history will be included, for enforcement of China’s controversial “one child” policy. Plans are being studied to add credit histories, subway travel payments and small purchases charged to the card.
Fscking twisted.
Article Link
Tags: China, Chinese Human Rights, 1984
Author: Dave Lewis
July 19, 2007 at 2:20 pm · Filed under Freedoms, Spy Game
Well, it appears that effective yesterday the CIA has changed the Freedom of Information Act guidelines to snub bloggers. They have taken the position that media is only media if they are getting paid. So, I guess 98% of the bloggers out there are left in the cold.
1. The authority citation for part 1900 continues to read as follows:
Authority: The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as amended (5
U.S.C. 552); the CIA Information Act of 1984 (50 U.S.C. 431); sec.
102 of the National Security Act of 1947, as amended (50 U.S.C.
403); and sec. 6 of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949, as
amended (50 U.S.C. 403(g)).
…and…
Representative of the News Media refers to any person actively
gathering news for an entity that is organized and operated to publish
or broadcast news to the public. The term “news” means information
that is about current events or that would be of current interest to
the public. Examples of news media entities include television or radio
stations broadcasting to the public at large, and publishers of
periodicals (but only in those instances when they can qualify as
disseminators of “news”) who make their products available for
purchase or subscription by the general public. These examples are not
intended to be all-inclusive. Moreover, as traditional methods of news
delivery evolve (e.g., electronic dissemination of newspapers through
telecommunications services), such alternative media would be included
in this category. In the case of “freelance” journalists, they may be
regarded as working for a news organization if they can demonstrate a
solid basis for expecting publication through that organization, even
though not actually employed by it.
Ah, no love. Read the full article over on Cryptome.
Article Link
Tags: CIA, FOIA, Blogging, Media
Author: Dave Lewis
July 11, 2007 at 6:26 pm · Filed under Administravia, Freedoms
The party is over. Well, it had to happen at some point.
The Chinese government has made Liquidmatrix Security Digest persona non grata. I guess our pickup on the Chinese sub that was seen by a commercial satellite finally tipped the scales.
The censorship ring that is commonly referred to as the “Great Firewall of China” has dropped on this humble site. We found out today thanks the email sent in by a reader. Thanks for the heads up Pete.
Fine. Be that way China.
We don’t like you either. Well, not really. We still like you. The people that is, not the censors.
Tags: Great Firewall of China, Liquidmatrix Blocked, Censorship, China Internet
Author: Dave Lewis
June 7, 2007 at 9:42 am · Filed under Freedoms
The Iranian government continues to demonstrate it’s complete unwillingness to allow freedom of speech.
Want to start a blog in Iran? Then you’ll have to register it with the government - which has recently begun to require that all bloggers register at samandehi.ir, a site established by the ministry of culture of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government.
All you need do is give your personal information, including your blog’s username and password - otherwise it will be filtered and blocked so that nobody in Iran, and perhaps outside too, will be able to access it. This has led to an outcry among many Iranian bloggers who consider the net an independent and free forum for expression.
The Iranian government fears the people they rule and they should. The Iranian people yearn for freedom from oppression.
Article Link
Tags: Iranian Bloggers, Iran Freedoms. Iran Censorship
Author: Dave Lewis
April 30, 2007 at 8:22 am · Filed under Freedoms
If you have ever read anything on conspiracy theories, security agencies or the freedom of information then you have probably read Cryptome.org. It appears that they have been given the heave ho by their ISP, Verio.
Here is a excerpt of the termination letter from Cryptome.
[By certified mail, received 28 April 2007.]
(snip)
April 20, 2007
Via Certified Mail
John Young
Cryptome Org
251 West 89th Street
New Yor, NY 10024
RE: www.cryptome.org
Dear Mr. Young,
This letter is to notify you that we are terminating your service for violation of our Acceptable Use Policy, effective Friday May 4, 2007. We are providing you with two week notice to locate another service provider.
Sincerely,
VERIO INC.
an NTT Communications Company
[Signed]
Danna Thompson
Legal Department
(/snip)
This seems odd that they would terminate them with only two weeks notice. Granted this site has had a long history of pushing the buttons of the Bush administration as well as the British government. Now, Cryptome appears to be on the brink of homelessness.
Are there any providers out there that are willing to take them in? They have until May 4th.
Article Link
UPDATE:
Cryptome is now on a new ISP, Network Solutions, another US giant like Verio,
closely linked to the authorities. We’ll see if it can take the heat or cave.
We intend to test all the giants if necessary to see what is up with them and
the censors: if one buckles we’ll sign up with another. And air the results.
Meanwhile the archives are being distributed worldwide by other means.
Tags: Cryptome, Verio, Termination of Service, Freedom of Information
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