Internet News

Facebook has agreed to censor pages showing images of the religious character Mohammed in Turkey despite Mark Zuckerberg giving his support to freedom of speech proclaiming Je Suis Charlie .

A court in the Turkish capital, Ankara, ruled that several Facebook pages were deemed to be insulting the Prophet Mohammed and Facebook agreed to block access on January 25. The court had threatened that if the ruling was not adhered to, Facebook access would be wholly removed in the country.

The company's decision comes after Mark Zuckerberg said on Facebook that the site followed the laws of the country but we never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world . The billionaire added:

I'm committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear or violence... #JeSuisCharlie. Related Articles

According to Thai Netizen Network, the cabinet has given the green light to the proposed Cyber Security bill to establish a National Committee for Cyber Security, under the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (MDES), whose former title was the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT). The Cyber Security Bill was one of eight proposed bills on telecommunications which are aimed at restructuring and tightening control of telecommunications in Thailand.

In the draft, the National Committee for Cyber Security will be operated under the supervision of the Minister of Digital Economy and Society to oversee threats to national cyber security, which is defined as cyber threats related to national security, military security, stability, economic security, and interference on internet, satellite, and telecommunications networks.

Most importantly, the committee is authorized to access all communication traffic via all communication devices, such as post, telephone, mobile phone, internet, and other electronic devices. The committee will also have the authority to order all public and private organizations to cooperate against any perceived threats to national cyber security.

Facebook has begun placing warnings over videos posted to its site, stating their contents might shock, offend and upset if viewed.

The alerts prevent the videos from automatically playing in feeds unless they are clicked, unlike other clips.

The site is also preventing graphic videos and photos from being shown to any user who has identified themself as being under 18 years old.

Facebook allows news reports and other documentary images depicting beheadings and other types of murder to remain online. And among the first posts to be affected are uploaded files containing video footage of policeman Ahmed Merabet being shot dead in Paris by a terrorist involved in last week's Charlie Hebdo attacks.

Inevitable some campaigners don't think the restrictions go far enough.

Stephen Balkam, chief executive of the Family Online Safety Institute, told the BBC he wanted cover pages to be placed over graphic material to prevent people from seeing distressing images without warning, and an age-gate system implemented to make it harder for under-18s to find the material.nner.

Arthur Cassidy, who runs a branch of the Yellow Ribbon Program suicide-prevention group, said Facebook should implement an outright ban on clips and pictures of extreme violence. He claimed that large numbers of children used the service and said it was likely that many would try to work around the new restrictions.

The Chinese government is to force authors publishing their work online to register with their real names, as the authorities keep up the pressure on freedom of expression.

According to new regulations from the government's Bureau of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, which administers repressive control over media and publications, any authors posting literary works online must be in possession of a certificate, requiring real-name registration.

The new rules also call for further professional and moral training for authors of online literary works.

Of course things are pretty similar in the west with 'moral training' being renamed as 'cohesion sensitivity training' or 'attending an diversity awareness seminar'.

The use of a pen-name is a time-honored tradition in Chinese literature and journalism, and many writers use pseudonyms to mask their identities if they wish to write something which might be construed as critical of the regime. But pervasive state surveillance of individuals means that the authorities often know the identities of such authors.

Zhang Yu, secretary for the writers' group Independent Chinese PEN, said the move represents yet another attack on freedom of expression in China. Zhang told RFA:

This shows that they want to take their interference with writers' freedom of expression to the next level This will make it much easier for them to maintain surveillance of authors, using various types of software and other methods. In actual fact, the authorities are able to find out who an author is using various types of technology, whether they use their real names or a pseudonym.

The whole point of this [real-name] system is to create a sense of threat, so that authors will censor themselves.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris, EU ministers have issued a joint statement calling for ISPs to help to report and remove extremist material online.

The statement was signed by interior ministers from 11 European countries, including the UK's Theresa May, on 11 January, with French ministers and security representatives from the US, Canada and EU in attendance. It called for tighter internet surveillance and border controls.

But of course David Cameron wants to go further. According to the Independant, Cameron could block WhatsApp and Snapchat if he wins the next election, as part of his plans for extreme surveillance powers announced in the wake of the shootings in Paris. He said that he would stop the use of methods of communication that cannot be read by the security services even if they have a warrant.

But that could include popular chat and social apps that encrypt their data, such as WhatsApp. Apple's iMessage and FaceTime also encrypt their data, and could fall under the ban along with other encrypted chat apps like Telegram.

The comments came as part of David Cameron's pledge to revive the snoopers' charter to help security services spy on internet communications. He said: In our country, do we want to allow a means of communication between people which [...] we cannot read? But companies such as WhatsApp have remained committed to keeping their services encrypted and unable to be read by authorities.

Politics does make for strange bedfellows. Cameron's announcement comes just days after the Iranian government decided it was taking a similar step and banned WhatsApp, along with comms software Tango and LINE.

See also Why MI5 does not need more surveillance powers after the Paris attacks  from  theguardian.com by Henry Porter.

The Indian government has asked ISPs and mobile operators to block access to 32 sites in the name of its censorship laws GitHub, Archive.org, Imgur, Vimeo, Daily Motion and Pastebin are some of the more familiar names included on the list.

The leader of the Bharatiya Janata political party spouted some unlikely sounding bollox that the banned websites contained some content from ISIS.

Already it seems that some ISPs have taken action and cut access to a number of the websites. The Times Of India reports that its correspondents were not able to access Pastebin, DailyMotion or GitHub using Vodafone's 3G service, although they were able to get on the three sites via rival operator Airtel's service.

The addition of GitHub, a massively popular site for the community development of code seems a particularly harmful decision for India's technology industry. And surely there will be a powerful lobby calling for the unblocking of at least this site.

Update: 4 sites unblocked

2nd January 2015. See  article from  strangethingsarehappening.com

According to IANS , the Government decided to unblock four websites after they gave assurances to the government that they will not allow pasting on Jihadi propaganda. The sites that were unblocked were Website creation & hosting site Weebly.com , Video hosting platforms Vimeo.com & Dailymotion.com and software repository gist.github.com .

The original list of censored websites is:

1. justpaste.it/
2. hastebin.com
3. codepad.org
4. pastie.org
5. pastee.org
6. paste2.org
7. slexy.org
8. paste4btc.com/
9. 0bin.net
10. heypasteit.com
11. sourceforge.net/projects/phorkie
12. atnsoft.com/textpaster
13. archive.org
14. hpage.com
15. ipage.com/
16. webs.com/
17. weebly.com/
18. 000webhost.com/
19. freehosting.com
20. vimeo.com/
21. dailymotion.com/
22. pastebin.com
23. gist.github.com
24. ipaste.eu
25. thesnippetapp.com
26. snipt.net
27. tny.cz (Tinypaste)
28. github.com (gist-it)
29. nipplr.com/
30. termbin.com
31. www.snippetsource.net
32. cryptbin.com

Update: Pastebin Unbinned

7th January 2015. See  See  article from  zdnet.com

Pastebin tells ZDNet that the Indian government's wide-ranging internet block, which had included the site , has been removed and Indian citizens are again able to access Pastebin -- but 27 sites still remain banned under the order .

According to Pastebin's statement to ZDNet, there is still no verifiable explanation for India's government-ordered internet censorship.

Update: Unblocked

11th January 2015. See  article from  huffingtonpost.in

The Indian government has ended its blocking of all the 32 websites censored for the unlikely reason that the sites were being used by terrorists.  A source said:

Order was issued on Thursday to unblock all 32 websites that were blocked following complaint of Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad that ISIS is disseminating content through them. All websites has responded that they will work with government and removed jehadi content,