Censorship

China Tightens Internet Control in the Name of Fighting Porn, Piracy, and Cybercrime

As the year draws to a close, China's blocking of overseas websites - including Facebook, Twitter, and thousands of other websites including my blog - is more extensive and technically more sophisticated than ever. Controls over domestic content have also been tightening. People who work for Chinese Internet companies continue to complain that they remain under heavy pressure... more

China Hacks Google, Etc.

Many news sources are reporting on how Google and other corporations were hacked by China. The reports, depending on vendor, blame either PDF files via email as the original perpetrator, or lay most of the blame on an Internet Explorer 0day. more

The U.N.‘s Threat to the Net

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, writing in The Washington Post, declared that it is a "mistaken notion" that the U.N. "wants to 'take over,' police or otherwise control the Internet." Unfortunately, neither the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the WSIS' Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) or the Secretary General's column give comfort to those committed to cyber-freedom. more

Catalan Government Claims Spanish Online Censorship Breaching EU Laws

The Catalan government has written to the European Commission claiming that the Spanish government is in breach of EU law. In a letter from Jordi Puigneró Secretary of Telecommunications, Cybersecurity and the Digital Society at the Government of Catalonia addressed to Andrus Ansip, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, the Catalan government calls out the moves by the Madrid government as censorship. more

The Digital Sovereignty Ecosystem

The terms Digital Sovereignty or Souveraineté numérique have recently risen in prominence to describe the international rule of law as it applies to information and communication technologies. At a time when disinformation is proliferating and the rule of law, democracy, and human rights, together with long-standing relationships, are being cast aside, digital sovereignty is scaling in importance as a key defensive measure among many nations. more

EFF Warns ICANN Not to Engage in Censorship, Says It Should Stick to Technical Role

A series of articles published by EFF, coinciding with ICANN's 60th meeting in Abu Dhabi this week, Jeremy Malcolm warns that domain name registrars, registries and ICANN can become "free speech week leaks" for online censorship. more

Breaking the Internet HOWTO: The Unintended Consequences of Governmental Actions

"Breaking the Internet" is really hard to do. The network of networks is decentralized, resilient and has no Single Point Of Failure. That was the paradigm of the first few decades of Internet history, and most people involved in Internet Governance still carry that model around in their heads. Unfortunately, that is changing and changing rapidly due to misguided government intervention. more

When Did We Give Away the Internet?

I've been following the recent news on the World Summit on the Information Society, and it's getting really bizarre. The Wired article is one example of out of the out-of-this-world coverage on the World Summit; I heard a similar spin yesterday on a radio show that often shares material with the BBC. What king or dictator or bureaucrat has signed the document giving power over the Internet to one organization or another? Did I miss the ceremony? One laughable aspect of news reportage is that the founders and leaders of ICANN always avowed, with the utmost unction, that they were not trying to make policy decisions and were simply tinkering with technical functions on the Internet.  more

Proposed New IETF Standard Would Create a Nationally Partitioned “Internet”

For those worried about the threat of a state-based takeover of the Internet, there is no need to obsess over the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) exclusively. Three Chinese engineers are proposing a way to alter Internet standards to partition the Internet into autonomously administered national networks, using the domain name system (DNS). The idea was not proposed in the ITU; no, it was sent to a multi-stakeholder institution, the granddaddy of the Internet itself, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). more

Free, Slow, Censored Internet: A Bad Idea

The FCC is looking for an organization to provide free, slow, and censored Internet access. The censorship apparently would include email as well as websites. According to an article in today's Wall Street Journal: "Outgoing Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is pushing for action in December on a plan to offer free, pornography-free wireless Internet service to all Americans, despite objections from the wireless industry and some consumer groups [nb. and from me]... The winning bidder would be required to set aside a quarter of the airwaves for a free Internet service [nb. the WSJ hasn't got that part quite right]." more

We Must Keep Track of How Countries Will Confront Cybercrime in a New UN Convention

As a designated committee of experts prepares to draft a new treaty to combat the use of information and communications technologies in cybercrime at the UN in January 2022, it is paramount that other stakeholders oversee these discussions to avoid violating human rights on the Internet. This initiative was kickstarted by a 2019 resolution led by Russia and endorsed by other countries considered by many to behavior controversially on cybersecurity matters, such as China, Venezuela, Cambodia, North Korea, and others. more

Egypt’s Internet Blocked - I Call on My Friend Tarek Kamel to Unblock It and Join His People

Internet all over Egypt has been blocked in an unprecedented revolt. I call on my friend Tarek Kamel, Egypt's Minister of Telecommunication, to overturn this oppressive decision and to unblock the Internet in all Egypt immediately and to join his people in their peaceful revolt. I have known Tarek Kamel for more than a decade and long before he became minister back in the days when he used to say he had no authority and that the decisions were in the hands of his boss and that he was a mere decision-less adviser to then Minister of Telecommunication, Mr. Nazif. more

Catalan Referendum Sites Blocked by Court Order

Websites associated with the upcoming referendum in Catalonia are being blocked by ISPs in Spain. While several of the domain names used by advocates of the Catalan referendum have been seized by authorities others are being blocked by the ISPs in Spain. For those of us outside Spain the blocking has zero impact on us, so we can see the sites without any issue, but for users in Catalonia, ISPs are blocking access. more

Please, Keep the Core Neutral

Many in the technical community attribute the rapid growth and spread of the Internet to innovation that took place at the "edge" of the network, while its "core" was left largely application neutral to provide a universal and predictable building block for innovation. It is this core neutrality that provides a basis for the security and stability of the Internet as a whole. And it is this same core neutrality that is critical to the continued spread of the Internet across the Digital Divide. Unfortunately, when the politics of censorship rather than solely technical concerns drive the coordination of these "core" Internet resources, it threatens the future security and stability of the Internet. This paper proposes a paradigm upon which all the governments of the world have equal access to these core Internet resources to empower them and their citizens with the rights acknowledged in the WSIS Declaration of Principles. more

FTC to Big Tech: Don’t Trade American Privacy for Foreign Demands

In a striking admonition issued on August 21st, Andrew Ferguson, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), cautioned over a dozen major technology firms against bowing to foreign demands that compromise American users' data security or freedom of speech. more