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Internet Censorship
By Wayne Madsen
12-9-5
waynemadsenreport.com/
Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight but slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle East.
Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated by it.
In this case, "it," is what privacy and computer experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the web has been heavily censored in countries around the world. That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening right here in America.
The agreement by the Congress to extend an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship controls on the web.
Internet Censorship: The Warning Signs Were Not Hidden
The warning signs for the crackdown on the web have been with us for over a decade. The Clipper chip controversy of the 90s, John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness (TIA) system pushed in the aftermath of 9-11, backroom deals between the Federal government and the Internet service industry, and the Patriot Act have ushered in a new era of Internet censorship, something just half a decade ago computer programmers averred was impossible given the nature of the web. They were wrong, dead wrong.
Take for example of what recently occurred when two journalists were taking on the phone about a story that appeared on Google News. The story was about a Christian fundamentalist move in Congress to use U.S. military force in Sudan to end genocide in Darfur. The story appeared on the English Google News site in Qatar. But the very same Google News site when accessed simultaneously in Washington, DC failed to show the article. This censorship is accomplished by geolocation filtering: the restriction or modifying of web content based on the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries, such filtering can now be implemented for states, cities, and even individual IP addresses.
With reports in the Swedish newspaper Svensa Dagbladet today that the United States has transmitted a Homeland Security Department "no fly" list of 80,000 suspected terrorists to airport authorities around the world, it is not unreasonable that a "no [or restricted] surfing/emailing" list has been transmitted to Internet Service Providers around the world. The systematic disruptions of web sites and email strongly suggests that such a list exists.
News reports on CIA prisoner flights and secret prisons are disappearing from Google and other search engines like Alltheweb as fast as they appear. Here now, gone tomorrow is the name of the game.
Google is systematically failing to list and link to articles that contain explosive information about the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda, and U.S. political scandals. But Google is not alone in working closely to stifle Internet discourse. America On Line, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway dominated by barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead to dead ends, choke points, and security checks.
America On Line is the most egregious in stifling Internet freedom. A former AOL employee noted how AOL and other Internet Service Providers cooperate with the Bush administration in censoring email. The Patriot Act gave federal agencies the power to review information to the packet level and AOL was directed by agencies like the FBI to do more than sniff the subject line. The AOL term of service (TOS) has gradually been expanded to grant AOL virtually universal power regarding information. Many AOL users are likely unaware of the elastic clause, which says they will be bound by the current TOS and any TOS revisions which AOL may elect at any time in the future. Essentially, AOL users once agreed to allow the censorship and non-delivery of their email.
Microsoft has similar requirements for Hotmail as do Yahoo and Google for their respective e-mail services.
There are also many cases of Google's search engine failing to list and link to certain information. According to a number of web site administrators who carry anti-Bush political content, this situation has become more pronounced in the last month. In addition, many web site administrators are reporting a dramatic drop-off in hits to their sites, according to their web statistic analyzers. Adding to their woes is the frequency at which spam viruses are being spoofed as coming from their web site addresses.
Government disruption of the political side of the web can easily be hidden amid hyped mainstream news media reports of the latest "boutique" viruses and worms, reports that have more to do with the sales of anti-virus software and services than actual long-term disruption of banks, utilities, or airlines.
Internet Censorship in the US: No Longer a Prediction
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems have honed their skills at Internet censorship for years in places like China, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, and other countries. They have learned well. They will be the last to admit they have imported their censorship skills into the United States at the behest of the Bush regime. Last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign blocked international access to its web site -- www.georgewbush.com -- for unspecified "security reasons."
Only those in the Federal bureaucracy and the companies involved are in a position to know what deals have been made and how extensive Internet censorship has become. They owe full disclosure to their customers and their fellow citizens.
By Wayne Madsen
12-9-5
waynemadsenreport.com/
Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight but slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle East.
Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated by it.
In this case, "it," is what privacy and computer experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the web has been heavily censored in countries around the world. That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening right here in America.
The agreement by the Congress to extend an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship controls on the web.
Internet Censorship: The Warning Signs Were Not Hidden
The warning signs for the crackdown on the web have been with us for over a decade. The Clipper chip controversy of the 90s, John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness (TIA) system pushed in the aftermath of 9-11, backroom deals between the Federal government and the Internet service industry, and the Patriot Act have ushered in a new era of Internet censorship, something just half a decade ago computer programmers averred was impossible given the nature of the web. They were wrong, dead wrong.
Take for example of what recently occurred when two journalists were taking on the phone about a story that appeared on Google News. The story was about a Christian fundamentalist move in Congress to use U.S. military force in Sudan to end genocide in Darfur. The story appeared on the English Google News site in Qatar. But the very same Google News site when accessed simultaneously in Washington, DC failed to show the article. This censorship is accomplished by geolocation filtering: the restriction or modifying of web content based on the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries, such filtering can now be implemented for states, cities, and even individual IP addresses.
With reports in the Swedish newspaper Svensa Dagbladet today that the United States has transmitted a Homeland Security Department "no fly" list of 80,000 suspected terrorists to airport authorities around the world, it is not unreasonable that a "no [or restricted] surfing/emailing" list has been transmitted to Internet Service Providers around the world. The systematic disruptions of web sites and email strongly suggests that such a list exists.
News reports on CIA prisoner flights and secret prisons are disappearing from Google and other search engines like Alltheweb as fast as they appear. Here now, gone tomorrow is the name of the game.
Google is systematically failing to list and link to articles that contain explosive information about the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda, and U.S. political scandals. But Google is not alone in working closely to stifle Internet discourse. America On Line, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway dominated by barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead to dead ends, choke points, and security checks.
America On Line is the most egregious in stifling Internet freedom. A former AOL employee noted how AOL and other Internet Service Providers cooperate with the Bush administration in censoring email. The Patriot Act gave federal agencies the power to review information to the packet level and AOL was directed by agencies like the FBI to do more than sniff the subject line. The AOL term of service (TOS) has gradually been expanded to grant AOL virtually universal power regarding information. Many AOL users are likely unaware of the elastic clause, which says they will be bound by the current TOS and any TOS revisions which AOL may elect at any time in the future. Essentially, AOL users once agreed to allow the censorship and non-delivery of their email.
Microsoft has similar requirements for Hotmail as do Yahoo and Google for their respective e-mail services.
There are also many cases of Google's search engine failing to list and link to certain information. According to a number of web site administrators who carry anti-Bush political content, this situation has become more pronounced in the last month. In addition, many web site administrators are reporting a dramatic drop-off in hits to their sites, according to their web statistic analyzers. Adding to their woes is the frequency at which spam viruses are being spoofed as coming from their web site addresses.
Government disruption of the political side of the web can easily be hidden amid hyped mainstream news media reports of the latest "boutique" viruses and worms, reports that have more to do with the sales of anti-virus software and services than actual long-term disruption of banks, utilities, or airlines.
Internet Censorship in the US: No Longer a Prediction
Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems have honed their skills at Internet censorship for years in places like China, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, and other countries. They have learned well. They will be the last to admit they have imported their censorship skills into the United States at the behest of the Bush regime. Last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign blocked international access to its web site -- www.georgewbush.com -- for unspecified "security reasons."
Only those in the Federal bureaucracy and the companies involved are in a position to know what deals have been made and how extensive Internet censorship has become. They owe full disclosure to their customers and their fellow citizens.
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WTO Protests In Hong Kong
Sat, December 17, 2005 - 2:45 PMSpeaking of China. What will happen if corporate CNN can't report this anymore?
What happens when the press starts to get "embedded" at protests?
_____________
www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINES...ts/index.html
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- While the World Trade Organization struggled to reach any substantial agreements at its sixth ministerial conference, disagreement also brewed in the street outside the talks, in the worst protests Hong Kong has seen in decades.
After warning hundreds of protesters paralyzing the city center for hours to leave the streets outside the talks, riot police moved in early Sunday to disperse the crowd.
The crowd gathered outside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibit Center, however, did not go peacefully. Protesters continued banging drums and singing songs as some tussled with police.
But the protests never matched the level of violence that marred WTO talks in Seattle, Washington, in 1999 and Cancun, Mexico, in 2003.
The demonstrators included many South Korean farmers who came to the WTO conference to voice their displeasure with globalization and imports, topics high on the conference agenda.
The farmers oppose a number of measures, including lower trade barriers for agricultural imports, which they say would flood South Korea with cheap rice and force the nation's farmers out of business -- a concern echoed by anti-globalization groups around the world. (WTO: No firm date for farm rules)
Around 3:30 a.m. (2:30 p.m. ET), police moved into the fray, linking hands to form a cordon around the activists, then dragging them out and into nearby police vans.
The melee, which followed violence at Saturday's demonstrations, prompted protest leaders to consider abandoning Sunday's anti-WTO march, said Elizabeth Tang, a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong People's Alliance on the WTO.
Tang added that she would contact leaders of individual protest organizations to determine if they would participate in the 2 p.m. (1 a.m. ET) march. A rally slated for the same time will proceed as planned, she said.
Police on Saturday resorted to pepper spray, tear gas and fire hoses to dissuade protesters trying to edge closer to the convention center, located in downtown Hong Kong.
Before Saturday, the fifth day of the conference, demonstrations had been largely peaceful, tainted only by a few minor scuffles, but South Korean protesters vowed to step up their protests on Saturday.
And step it up they did, attempting to break through a barrier marking the designated protest zone. When their attempts failed, between 1,000 and 1,500 protesters split into smaller groups of about 12 each, fleeing police over several square blocks before returning to the convention center and pushing forward.
The nearest the protesters got to the convention center was Saturday night, when they inched within 100 meters of the convention center entrance.
Police donned gas masks and propped up riot shields as they fired the hoses, tear gas and pepper spray -- an unusual tactic in normally peaceful Hong Kong.
Forty-one people were reported injured in Saturday's clashes, said Hong Kong Police Commissioner Dick Lee.
In an effort to continue the protests but stem the violence, a South Korean urged his fellow demonstrators, via megaphone, to be arrested with dignity and asked them to lie down and be taken away in a nonviolent fashion.
Police eventually quelled the violence, but the protesters refused to leave.
A main thoroughfare in the densely populated commercial and residential district was closed because of the standoffs and clashes with police.
Between 6,000 and 7,000 protesters showed up at the talks, but only a portion of them participated in Saturday's violence, and though 2,000 police have been deployed to the area, Hong Kong has drawn criticism for choosing a building that is so accessible and establishing a protest area too difficult to contain.
As for the conference itself, it was experiencing its own difficulties. A draft agreement on several issues was reached, but there was no final consensus as of Saturday night.
The main purpose of the draft was to reach a compromise on setting a timeline for eliminating agricultural export subsidies in richer countries -- an issue that has often caused a rift between the United States and European Union.
