Category Archives: IM Weekly

#IMWeekly: September 16, 2013

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China
Chinese Internet users, worried about the implications of the country’s new anti-online rumor policy, are scrambling to “un-verify” their Weibo accounts. The new policy, part of a judicial decision made earlier this month, allows Chinese Internet users to be charged with defamation (and sentenced to up to 3 years in jail) if they post a rumor online that is reposted more than 500 times or visited more than 5000 times. Weibo users with verified accounts—which indicate that the user, generally a celebrity, is who he or she claims to be—are asking the microblogging site to remove their verified status in the hopes that this might prevent them from being as easily identified (and potentially charged with defamation) online.

Germany
More than 20,000 people gathered in Berlin earlier this month to protest against surveillance. Protestors at Freiheit Statt Angst (Freedom Not Fear), organized by a coalition of human rights organizations, political parties, and NGOs, spoke out against the effects of surveillance on press freedom and human rights, among other issues.

Vietnam
Activist Ngo Hao has been sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of publishing false and defaming information about government officials online and of trying to overthrow the government. Hao is one of at least 35 bloggers and cyberdissidents currently detained in Vietnam.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#IMWeekly: September 9, 2013

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United States
More news about PRISM broke last week: according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA has either circumvented or broken most commonly used encryption systems. This affects both financial and medical data as well as the contents of emails, chats, and other online communications. The Guardian reports that Hotmail, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook, among other service providers, may be affected.

United States
Following close on Facebook’s heels, Yahoo! released its first-ever transparency report last week. The report covers government data requests from 17 countries, and discloses the total number of requests, the number of user accounts specified in those requests, and the number of requests for which Yahoo! disclosed both content and non-content data, among other statistics.

Vietnam
Earlier this summer, Vietnam’s prime minister approved “Decree 72,” which prohibits blogs and social media sites from “‘quote[ing]’, ‘gather[ing]’ or summariz[ing] information from press organizations or government websites.” The decree, which effectively outlaws political discussion online, took effect on September 1.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#IMweekly: September 3, 2013

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Azerbaijan
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Nakhchivan, an Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan, has ordered Internet cafes throughout the area to shut down. Human rights activists speculate that the order may be part of an attempt to curb online dissent in advance of Azerbaijan’s October 9 presidential elections. Bloggers and journalists throughout the country who are critical of the government have faced arrests, hacking, and blackmail attempts over the past year as part of a broad crackdown on online freedom of expression.

Gambia
Recently passed legislation in Gambia amending the Information and Communication Act to include a prohibition against the spread of false news and the jail terms of up to 15 years. Speaking about the new legislation, Gambia’s head of Civil Service and Minister of Presidential Affairs warned, “If you cannot say anything good about the country, then you should keep quiet.”

Syria
As the conflict in Syria continues, the country’s Internet connectivity is experiencing a number of changes. Internet access in Aleppo, the country’s largest city, went completely dark on August 29. Renesys explored the country’s international service providers and noted that Aleppo appears to be served almost exclusively by Turk Telecom via a land-based cable link, while the rest of the country is served by a small handful of other providers via three undersea cables.

United States
Last week we reported on Internet.org, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s new venture to bring Internet access to the global masses. As it turns out, the previous owner of the Internet.org domain had no idea to whom he was selling it.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#imweekly: August 26, 2013

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China
Chinese mobile app WeChat has a growing international presence, making it the fifth most popular mobile app worldwide. Within the country, WeChat is heavily monitored, and users are blocked from sending messages containing prohibited keywords. TeaLeafNation reports that TenCent, which owns WeChat, is now offering two versions of the app: a censored version for Chinese users, and an uncensored version for international use. The problem: the lines between the two are unclear, as shown by the suspension last week of a US-based WeChat account belonging to ChinaGate, a Chinese-language web portal hosted outside of China.

Finland
The Finnish Supreme Administrative Court ruled today that the country’s National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) was within its rights when it added an anti-censorship website to its secret list of blocked sites. The blocking took place under a 2006 law that enabled the NBI to maintain a secret blocklist of sites that distribute child pornography. The website lapsiporno.info (“childporn.info”) has been monitoring the bureau’s activities, criticizing the secrecy behind the blocklist and compiling a list of known blocked sites. When lapsiporno.info was blocked, operator Matt Nikki sued the NBI. The court ruled that even though Nikki’s site did not host any child porn, by listing blocked sites it was enabling users to find such sites, and therefore, the NBI’s blocking of lapsiporno.info was legal.

United States
Mark Zuckerberg announced last week that Facebook, along with a handful of tech companies, is launching an effort to bring Internet access to everyone on Earth. Zuckerberg told the New York Times that the project—Internet.org—is more about doing “something good for the world” than for profit, but many commentators disagree. The New Yorker’s Matt Buchanan notes that the project offers little in the way of infrastructure building, which is one of the biggest obstacles to Internet access. And The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal points out that the project heavily recuts a John F. Kennedy speech, stripping the original Cold War context and perhaps, Madrigal argues, changing the meaning entirely.

United States
The newest piece of the NSA surveillance scandal: LOVEINT. Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that several NSA officers have used their power to spy on their romantic partners. Approximately ten cases of this type of abuse of NSA power have emerged over the past decade, and according to NSA officials, in each case, the employee responsible was punished and/or terminated. The LOVEINT discovery comes amidst the NSA’s admission last week that in the past year alone, the agency violated privacy regulations nearly 3000 times.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#imweekly: August 19, 2013

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Cuba
Earlier this year, Cuba’s government-owned telecommunications firm activated two undersea fiber optic cables and announced it would open 100 new public Internet cafés. Cuban citizens, heretofore largely cut off from the global Internet, are now beginning to go online. Access is not cheap—at $4.50 per hour, or roughly the average weekly salary for a state employee, using one of the cafés is still out of reach for many Cubans—and those who want to go online must first sign a statement swearing they will not do anything that might harm Cuba’s “economy, sovereignty or national security.”

Thailand
The government of Thailand has announced its intentions to monitor conversations on the Line messaging app, claiming that surveillance is necessary to “safeguard order, security and morality of Thailand.” The national police’s Technology Crime Suppression Division has asked the Japan-based company to give access to Thai authorities.

United Kingdom
The partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been reporting on the NSA’s surveillance programs for the Guardian, was detained at Heathrow airport yesterday under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. David Miranda had been in Berlin to meet with a filmmaker who has been working with Greenwald on the Snowden files; he was returning to his home in Rio de Janeiro when he was stopped and questioned for nine hours—the maximum allowed by the law. His laptop, phone, and other electronics were confiscated. Greenwald has publicly stated that the detention was an “abuse of the law” intended to intimidate reporters writing about the NSA; Amnesty International has spoken out against the detention.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.