Censorship

The U.N. and the Internet: What to expect, what to fear (FAQ)

The inner workings of United Nations telecommunications agencies aren't usually headline news. But then again, most U.N. confabs don't grapple with topics as slippery as Internet censorship, taxation, and privacy.

A U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union has kicked off what has become a highly controversial summit this week in Dubai, capping over a year of closed-door negotiations over an international communications treaty that could have a direct impact on the Internet. The summit continues through the end of next week.

It's true, of course, that U.N. meetings often yield more rhetoric than … Read more

U.N. summit votes to support Internet eavesdropping

A United Nations summit has adopted confidential recommendations proposed by China that will help network providers target BitTorrent uploaders, detect trading of copyrighted MP3 files, and, critics say, accelerate Internet censorship in repressive nations.

Approval by the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union came despite objections from Germany, which warned the organization must "not standardize any technical means that would increase the exercise of control over telecommunications content, could be used to empower any censorship of content, or could impede the free flow of information and ideas."

The ITU adopted the confidential Y.2770 standard for deep packet … Read more

War-torn Syria sees restoration of Net after two-day outage

The Internet is back up in most parts of Syria, which had been experiencing what some say was a state-orchestrated outage presumably designed to hamper rebel forces.

The BBC reported today that the country's capital city of Damascus again had Net access, and Renesys, which operates a real-time grid that continuously monitors Internet routing data, said in a blog post today that it had confirmed a "largely complete restoration of the Syrian Internet."

Renesys and other companies that offer back-end Net services detected a sharp cutoff in traffic to Syria on Thursday. According to Reuters, Syria's minister of information blamed the outage on terrorists, … Read more

Google reactivates Speak2Tweet for Syrian Internet cutoff

Google and Twitter have restarted their Speak2Tweet service to let people disseminate voice messages over Twitter as a way to sidestep Syria's Internet blackout.

The Speak2Tweet service got its start during Egypt's Internet blackout in February 2011 but has been largely dormant since then. Late yesterday, Google announced on Google+ that it's brought the service back online:

In the last day, Internet access has been completely cut off in Syria. Unfortunately we are hearing reports that mobile phones and landlines aren't working properly either. But those who might be lucky enough to have a voice connection … Read more

Russian court: Get 'extremist' Pussy Riot videos off the Web

A Moscow district court has ruled that videos by jailed Russian punk band Pussy Riot are considered "extremist" material and must be blocked by Internet providers in the country, according to news reports.

The unnamed judge today read out the IP addresses of the Web sites hosting the Pussy Riot videos and ordered them to remove the videos, according to the Associated Press. It is not clear whether Google-owned YouTube was on the list.

Government experts labeled the videos a "disguised call to organize mass riots on squares similar to the Occupy Wall Street or the events … Read more

Congressman proposes two-year ban on Net regulation bills

A new proposal would temporarily stop the federal government from pushing through bills and regulations on the Internet's content.

Recent attempts to regulate the Internet -- in the form of SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA -- are all dead in the water after failing in Congress. But the potential of poorly thought-out changes remains a reality.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) released a draft of the proposed bill, dubbed the "Internet American Moratorium Act 2012," to Project Madison on Monday. The crowdsourcing platform allows people to read and amend draft bills online, striking through text and adding … Read more

U.N. summit may usher in more Internet regulations

PALO ALTO, Calif.--A United Nations summit next week could imperil Internet freedom and lead to a deluge of intrusive new national regulations, Google and a member of the U.S. delegation warned.

"We want to maintain a platform of a free and open Internet as a platform for free expression," Patrick Ryan, an attorney at Google, said at a forum organized by Stanford Law School here yesterday afternoon. Google has organized a new campaign to draw attention to the summit, saying some governments "are trying to use a closed-door meeting in December to regulate the Internet.&… Read more

Russia demands broad UN role in Net governance, leak reveals

commentary The Russian Federation is calling on the United Nations to take over key aspects of Internet governance, including addressing and naming, according to documents leaked on Friday from an upcoming treaty conference.

The Russians made their proposal on November 13 in the lead-up to December's World Conference on International Communications in Dubai. The conference will consider revisions to the International Telecommunications Regulations (ITRs), a treaty overseen by the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The treaty has not been revised since 1988, before the emergence of the commercial Internet.

Russia's proposals would, if adopted, dramatically affect Internet … Read more

Google access restored in China, says report

Google, Gmail, and other Google services seem to be accessible again in China this morning, according to a report, after an outage that coincided with the start of the once-a-decade meeting to appoint a new Communist government.

Access to the services returned after 6 a.m. local time, after an approximately 12-hour outage, according to IDC News Service, which cited Google's Transparency Report, along with confirmation from GreatFire.org, a group that monitors Internet censorship in China.

Early yesterday, California time, data provided by Google's Transparency Report showed a sharp drop off in traffic to Google's Web sites … Read more

Google disrupted in China, once again

Google has experienced a precipitous drop in traffic from China, which a Web-monitoring group attributed to the search engine being "blocked" by the government.

Data provided by Google's Transparency Report shows a sharp drop off in traffic -- to roughly half the normal amount -- to Google's Web sites as of early this morning California time.

GreatFire.org, which performs real-time monitoring, suggested that the drop meant the Chinese government is "one step closer to fully separating the Chinanet from the Internet."

It wasn't immediately clear whether the block was intended to be … Read more