AIPAC urges U.S. to shut Iranian site

Haaretz reports:

he American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is urging the United States government to disconnect an Iranian news site from American Internet servers, charging that the site has ties to terrorist organizations. The allegation is based on a report published by Haaretz last month.

Is terror the new porn?

Human Rights Watch Report

Human Rights Watch has released a report on Internet censorship. It particularly focuses on the role U.S. corporations in censorsing their products in order to enter the Chinese market. The report's title, "Race to the Bottom", sums up the situation quite well.

(A mirror copy for those who cannot access the hrw.org website is available here.[9.8mb .zip])

The report's principal researcher and editor, Rebecca MacKinnon, did a great job of weaving together the filtering practices of Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Skype with reactions from the Chinese community, especially bloggers. Chapter 4 in particular is well worth the read. It really highlights the point that Internet censorship and surveillance is not merely an academic exersize, the choices these companies are making are having an effect on people's lives. I know I tend to get bogged down in technical details sometimes (as I am about to do in the next paragraph) and it was a good reminder for me.

Internet Filtering in Vietnam

The OpenNet Initiative has released a report on Internet filtering in Vietnam. Vietnam purports to prevent access to Internet sites primarily to safeguard against obscene or sexually explicit content. However, the state's actual motives are far more pragmatic: while it does not block any of the pornographic sites ONI tested, it filters a significant fraction - in some cases, the great majority - of sites with politically or religiously sensitive material. Click here for the full report.

Israeli InfoWar

Bomb's couldn't take out Al-Manar, so Israel hacked their signal.

In the middle of newscasts and programming from Hezbollah's Al-Manar station, Israeli technicians are hacking the signal and replacing it with a 90-second spot that begins with a gun site superimposed on a crude drawing of Hezbollah's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, looking at the ground.

The image is punctuated by the sound of three gunshots and framed on the top with the words, "Your day is coming, coming, coming." On the bottom of the image of Sheik Nasrallah are the words: "The state of Israel." For the next 90 seconds, the message is clear: Give up. Resistance is futile.

More from Zone-H.

And the defacement war has also been underway.