Internet Filtering in Uzbekistan

RSF and neweurasia.net report on new blocking in Uzbekistan. www.neweurasia.net, a bridge blogging site, appears to be the latest target of censorship in Uzbekistan.

Although there are variations in blocking among ISP's in Uzbekistan, websites, such as ferghana.ru, that provide alternative information and host discussion forums have long been targetted.

Opposition parties and Islamic movements and Chechnya-related sites are also targetted.

X Marks the Spot

After the French Government tried to get GreenPeace to remove a GoogleMap from their site that showed the location of secret, genetically modified maise GP marked the spot with a crop circle.

The map has apparently been removed from the GreenPeace France website.

War Censorship

The Associated Press has agreed to follow Israel's censorship rules, and has an article on the subject:

Here's some news you may never hear about Israel's war against Hezbollah: a missile falls into the sea, a strategic military installation is hit, a Cabinet minister plans to visit the front lines.

All these topics are subject to review by Israel's chief military censor, who has -- in her own words -- "extraordinary power." She can silence a broadcaster, block information and put journalists in jail.

"I can, for example, publish an order that no material can be published. I can close a newspaper or shut down a station. I can do almost anything," Col. Sima Vaknin said Wednesday.

Internet Filtering in India

India is not new to Internet filtering. Back in 2004 India's Ministry of Communications & Information Technologyordered ISP's to start blocking web sites. The target was a particular Yahoo! Group, but the ISP's blocked access to the IP address (see Why Block by IP?) of the groups.yahoo.com domain causing all Yahoo! Groups to be blocked illustrating one of Internet filtering's unintended consequences. India subsequently ordered the extremist HinduUnity site to be blocked as well (which caused additional "over-blocking"). There were variations in compliance but large ISPs such as VSNL did comply.

So India's new filtering is not surprising. Once again the Ministry ordered sites to be blocked, some of which are blogs hosted on Blogspot and Typepad. The ISP's blocked the IP addresses of the sites causing all the blogs hosted on them to be blocked.

GFW Discussion

I previously commented on the Ignoring the “Great Firewall of China” paper but 0day pointed me to a good critique of the paper. The critique makes several points on the technical side including noting that circumventing keyword by blocking RST packets would not work for "'hard' IP filtering", that China could upgrade its system to account for other noted deficiencies and that ignoring reset packets is detectable and has security concerns.

Reality and GFW Redux

Nicholas Kristoff of the NY Times created two blogs on hosting services in China and posted content intended to be provactive. To his "frustration" he was not immediately censored (other than crude filtering, such as replacing keywords with asterizes). This expectation of instant censorship stems from myths surrounding internet censorship in China. Kristoff repeats the 30,000 internet police myth although referring to ineptitude rather than the usual omnipotence. This demonstration leads Kristoff to conclude that "the Internet is just too big and complex for State Security to control" and that he doesn't "see how the Communist Party dictatorship can long survive the Internet".

It's funny. There always seems to be two approaches to the topic of censorship in China: the "1984" and the "technoptimist".

The "1984" approach overstates China's capabilties claiming that legions of internet police monitor everything in "real time" and are just one kick away if you make the wrong click. The "technoptimist" approach understates China's capabilites and claims that the internet is a democracy-battering-ram chipping away at the crumbling walls of oppressive regimes.

Both are short on detail and long on hubris.

So, here's a repost of "Reality and GFW" Part 1 and Part 2.

Would you like a Coke with that?

According to a recent report:

Coca-Cola recently signed a three year deal with Shanghai based Internet cafe chain Eastday to sell its beverage products in Eastday's Internet cafes, Oriental Morning Post reports. Eastday will assist Coca-Cola in promotions.

In other news, China has launched a"seasonal campaign" against cafe's to restrict access to minors. Internet cafe's in China remain under heavy surveillance although not every action taken to regulate cafe's should be interpreted as an attack on freedom of speech. As my colleague Derek pointed out a while back "[t]here a tendency to see Chinese actions through the lens of political opposition and dissent" which can be rather simplistic.

However, normalizing heavy surveillance, even in cafe where people are more likely to be playng CounterStrike and WorldofWarcraft rather than engaging in political dissent, does have a broader significance. Just as filtering for pornography, for example, is usually the initial reason for implemnting Internet filtering which begins to transition to political censorship, once the technology and policies are in place governments cannot resist expanding its use. This is what many fear will happen with all the security and surveillance equipment being sold to China for the 2008 Olympics.

Who's got stock in China Security & Surveillance Technology Inc. ?