Tag: CENSORSHIP

We've all thought it, but never dared think it could be true: what if Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL actively monitor our instant messenger chats? What if mentions of 'bomb' and 'underage' are tracked and sent to law enforcement agencies? What if chat providers don't agree with the things we say, or the links we share, and filter or censor the content of our transmitted messages? Well, it looks like ...

A fantastic list of banned, no-we-shall-not-auto-complete-that Google Instant phrases has been compiled. At the moment there's a list of about 250, but we're certain it will quickly grow as the community prods and probes Google's new Instant search. It shouldn't really come as a surprise that Google has a blacklist for Google Instant -- after all, the vast majority of searchers won't be ...

At the beginning of the month, we told you how Google's license to operate in China was up for renewal. Well, that renewal has finally come through, and Google will be allowed to stay in the country. The search giant had temporarily redirected its Chinese site to Google.hk in Hong Kong, to avoid censorship, but ended the redirect to make sure the renewal went through. It's not surprising that ...

It's an odd thing; everybody seems to want to get out of the Great Firewall of China. Intensive googling has revealed nothing but ways to bypass, circumvent, or otherwise get around the firewall from within China. But what if I run a website, and I want to see what it looks like from within China? I don't mean just the website itself; I also want to see what search terms it shows up for, what it ...

I'm back! Back from the cold, grey, barren wastes of the North. It seems, while I've been away, that people have busy been pissing around with things that really should be left well alone. First, you surely heard about the crazy Appeals Court decision that Comcast could do whatever it likes to the users of its network. I could try to describe this lunacy in words, but a guttural noise says it ...

This bit of news is really over the top: It turns out that China required GoDaddy to obtain photo headshot identification of all Chinese nationals who tried to register domains with them. They were then to transfer this identification to a Chinese authority called the Network Information Center (CNNIC) so that they could "review" it. Not only that, but they were supposed to do it retroactively, ...

That's it; the deed is done -- Google stopped censoring results for China. As of this morning, users trying to access google.cn are redirected to google.com.hk, where Google provides uncensored search results. They use geolocation to figure out when a connection is from the mainland, and provide results in simplified Chinese. Users connecting from Hong Kong will keep getting results in ...

So Google implicated the Chinese government of cyber warfare (an accusation which was then backed up by the White House). Google then went into talks with the Chinese government about said attacks and the Chinese requirement to censor search results. The talks apparently went quite badly, and have now come to a standstill. And now, Yahoo! News reports that Google is pulling out of China. Might ...

Next Tuesday French lawmakers will vote on a bill dubbed 'Loppsi 2' that will give the authorities the power to force ISPs to block access to any web address. The intention of the bill is to allow French authorities to block sites in order to prevent the distribution of child pornography, but ultimately gives the government unilateral control to filter the internet. Amendments to the bill ...

The folks over at CNET have been doing some investigative reporting of the finest calibre: it turns out that Google censors a very odd set of words. Some of the words on the list are the regular mainstay of such things -- the f-word, the s-word and even the c-word (no, not that one). It seems that Google Voice (or, more specifically Voice when running on Android devices) replaces censored ...

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, the co-founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, said that software developers are working on 'interesting hacks' to evade the censorship by oppressive governments in China and Iran. He didn't go as far to say what these 'hacks' are -- he also said that the technology is being coded by third-party developers, rather than Twitter itself -- but he alluded to some ...

Ladies and gentlemen, you are now witnessing a landmark moment. Look at the clock, take a good look around you and absorb your surroundings, because history is being made. Google has just published a statement with thinly-veiled disgrace for the Chinese government. While it's not said directly -- perhaps for fear of serious retaliation -- the wording definitely implies that the Chinese government ...

Way back in 1998, US president Bill Clinton signed into law a measure called the Child Online Protection Act. And it's never actually been enforced. As the name suggested, the law was intended to help protect kids from the dangerous things that can be found on the internet, specifically pictures of naked people. But critics said it limited free speech, and didn't make it clear how to distinguish ...

Freenet is a tool that lets users publish pretty much anything online "without fear of censorship." The software stores your data on a decentralized, anonymous network of nodes made up of other Freenet users' computers. Freenet communications are encrypted and routed through those nodes, making it difficult for anyone to trace what you're doing. The service is useful for communication where a ...

While China has a history of blocking computer users' access to many sites on the world wide interwebs, many clever Chinese citizens have figured out that RSS feeds provided a way around the Chinese firewall. Until now. Ars Technica reports that China has started blocking any URL that starts with "feeds," "rss," and "blog." That makes it pretty difficult to access the feeds for an awful lot of ...