So True.

Most articles on Internet censorship in China contain factual errors. I have mostly focused on the technical side of things. I agree with Kaiser who states:

In recent years, Western reporting on Beijing’s efforts to restrict Internet content has created the impression of draconian control: legions of Party stalwarts, filtering for sensitive keywords and all too ready to muzzle offenders.

And Rebecca too:

Western reporters can get away with this kind of sloppy reporting because there is so much real censorship happening every day in China. So reports of censorship are always believable - to foreigners as well as to many Chinese.

However, I don't believe the answer to be so simple. Are there that many gullible/incompetent journalists out there? What about their editors? The media corporations they work for? The question still remains: why? I'd speculate but... maybe... another time.

Internet Filtering in Singapore

The OpenNet Initiative has released a report on Internet filtering in Singapore:

The Republic of Singapore is an economic leader in Southeast Asia, with a vibrant information and communications technologies sector; however, the state maintains strong formal and informal controls over the information to which its citizens have access. Singapore’s official position is that the state filters Internet content to promote social values and maintain national unity, with the goal of denying access to objectionable material, especially pornography and content encouraging ethnic or religious strife. The Media Development Authority (MDA) claims to block only a symbolic list of 100 Web sites (primarily pornography) as a symbol of the state’s disapproval of this content. In addition, the MDA encourages, and each of Singapore’s three primary Internet Service Providers offers, optional, filtered Internet access services that block additional sites for a minimal monthly fee.

In our testing, the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) found extremely minimal filtering of Internet content in Singapore, as only eight sites of 1,632 tested (.49%) were blocked: www.cannabis.com, www.chick.com, www.formatureaudiencesonly.com, www.penthouse.com, www.persiankitty.com, www.playboy.com, www.playgirl.com, and www.sex.com. The limited blocking that our testing revealed focuses on a few pornographic URLs and one site each in the categories of illegal drugs and fanatical religion. Similar content is readily available at other sites on the Internet that are not blocked in Singapore. Thus, Singapore’s Internet content regulation depends primarily on access controls (such as requiring political sites to register for a license) and legal pressures (such as defamation lawsuits and the threat of imprisonment) to prevent people from posting objectionable content rather than technological methods to block it. Compared to other countries that implement mandatory filtering regimes that ONI has studied closely, Singapore’s technical filtering system is one of the most limited.

Internet Surveillance & Arrest in Iraq

I just read Khalid Jarrar's post about his arrest in Iraq. Not only is it a sobering reminder of the reality of the situation in Iraq it also illustrates the surveillance the population is under and the disdain for freedoms of all sorts by the authorities there. Khalid was arrested for reading the comments section of his brother's blog:

Then finally I understood why I was there, after few hours. Security guards at the university had printed out all the websites I was reading while I was online there. They were accusing me of “reading terrorism sites” and “having communications with foreign terrorists”.
“Do you know what these pages are?”
I looked at them and figured out they were the comment section of Raed in the Middle!!
I opened the comments section while browsing in the university, read some comments, and didn’t even post anything. But these people don’t seem to know what the internet is, and they don’t speak English, so I was a major suspect of being an assistant of al Zarqawi maybe! Or that I have a terrorist group of my own, with foreign connections!

Khalid goes on to describe his experience and those with whom he was imprisoned.He also described how at the time of his release he was made to sign a document stating he would nto discuss his experiences.

On Thursday, the judge decided that I was innocent. He figured out that the papers were from a public forum, and he didn’t find any comments posted by me.
I wasn’t released till Saturday morning, after I was forced to sign a paper committing that I wouldn’t tell the families of the arrested people that they are arrested, and that I wouldn’t tell anyone about anything that happened while I was arrested or tell them what I saw inside the jail, and that I would report any case of breaking the law that I know about to the authorities (at this point I laughed and asked: even if someone drove his car through a red traffic light?), and that I wouldn’t visit terrorism websites.

I, of course, told all the families I could that their sons are arrested in the seventh floor of the ministry of interior in the hands of the Mukhabarat, and here I am telling you everything that happened with me, and I am planning to visit all kind of websites as much as I like as long as I want.

Telus Filtering... Badly

While blocking access to one Union site (during an escalating labour dispute) Telus actually blocked access to 766 other domains hosted on the same IP address. Blocking by IP address is often the first choice for ISP's new to blocking and it has serious unintended consequences. Here is the lastest ONI bulletin:

On July 25, 2005, Canadian Internet Service Provider (ISP) Telus blocked subscribers' access to a Web site set up by an employee labor union intended to publicize the union's views about its dispute with Telus. In addition, the OpenNet Initiative's (ONI) research shows that Telus's decision to block traffic to the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the site caused collateral filtering of at least 766 additional, unrelated Web sites. Telus restored access to the IP address hosting the sites on July 28, 2005, while appearing to maintain an option to block any sites it chooses.

The full bulletin is available here (pdf).