Twitter has moved far beyond just being a network you use to tweet about your lunch, and along with the many useful services it’s a platform for, it can also be a tool for terrorism and violence. At least that’s how seven House Republicans see it, and that’s why they’re asking the FBI to shut down Hamas-related Twitter accounts. More »
As eagerly as Google has gone through routing acrobatics to minimize the Chinese government’s ability to censor and spy on its its services, it’s still at the mercy of the Great Firewall. The company might have just run head-first into the bricks as of Friday. As confirmed by some of our own staff, all of Google’s services stopped working in China for at least the better part of a day despite the search firm verifying that everything was in good working order. Officials haven’t confirmed that anything was afoot, but it’s easy to raise the specter of possible censorship given local political maneuvering. The once-a-decade Communist Party Congress began on Thursday, and the establishment may have wanted to cut off a relatively unfiltered line of communication for dissidents during a transition of power. We’re hearing that access may have ameliorated in at least parts of the country, which would be a pleasant surprise — not that a sudden improvement in service will cheer up those who know they still face a backlog.
Update: As SlashGear notes, Computerworld / IDG has reported that Google’s services were up and running in country again after about 12 hours of being inaccessible. Official details on the blocking are still slim as ever (and will likely remain as such) about the happenings, but you can click through the links above for more in the meantime.
Filed under: Networking, Internet, Google
Google services grind to a halt in China, political transition suspected as the culprit (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Computerworld | 
Google Transparency Report | Email this | Comments
As eagerly as Google has gone through routing acrobatics to minimize the Chinese government’s ability to censor and spy on its its services, it’s still at the mercy of the Great Firewall. The company might have just run head-first into the bricks as of Friday. As confirmed by some of our own staff, all of Google’s services stopped working in China for at least the better part of a day despite the search firm verifying that everything was in good working order. Officials haven’t confirmed that anything was afoot, but it’s easy to raise the specter of possible censorship given local political maneuvering. The once-a-decade Communist Party Congress began on Thursday, and the establishment may have wanted to cut off a relatively unfiltered line of communication for dissidents during a transition of power. We’re hearing that access may have ameliorated in at least parts of the country, which would be a pleasant surprise — not that a sudden improvement in service will cheer up those who know they still face a backlog.
Filed under: Networking, Internet, Google
Google services grind to a halt in China, political transition suspected as the culprit originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 10 Nov 2012 00:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink Computerworld | Google Transparency Report | Email this | Comments
In an effort to stay on the right side of German law, Twitter has blocked access within Germany to all tweets by the neo-Nazi group Besseres Hannover. This is the first time Twitter has censored speech to keep a government happy. But before you cry “censorship,” keep in mind that this is just good business. More »
Iranians who lost access to Gmail on September 24th should now be able to access their emails again after the government relaxed its ban. Telecommunications minister Rezi Miri conceded that the internet filter used couldn’t distinguish between the eponymous email service and YouTube, which has been banned for distributing inflammatory materials. Officials have said that, at least initially, its own proprietary intranet will exist alongside the internet, but didn’t go into specifics.
[Original Image: Wikimedia Commons]
Filed under: Internet
Iran unblocks Gmail, admits it only wants to restrict YouTube in the country originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Oct 2012 10:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink CNET | The Daily Star (AP) | Email this | Comments
After seriously flipping out, cutting of Iranian access to Google and basically herding all its citizens into a tiny little government-approved intra-net pen, the Iranian government has softened its Internet ban just a little bit and restored access to Gmail. More »
While Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in New York, his cronies at home are shutting every single one of their citizens out of the internet. Their reasoning: ‘we may get attacked by zionist viruses.’ Riiiight. More »
Iranians have been having trouble accessing YouTube, Gmail and other Google services for some time now, but their digital world may be growing even smaller — Iran announced today that it plans to shuffle citizens onto its own domestic version of the web. Reuters reports that officials plan to connect citizens to the national information network that’s currently in use at government agencies. Iran hopes to complete the transition by March of next year, and is already taking steps to isolate its population from certain international services. “Google and Gmail will be filtered throughout the country until further notice,” an Iranian official added, noting that the ban would commence in “a few hours.”
Some locals, such as the Iranian Students’ News Agency, are attributing the ban to recent protests sparked by a trailer for an anti-Islamic film on YouTube called Innocence of Muslims, but the government has made no official comment on the reason behind the ban. The state isn’t clear on the fate of the global internet in Iran, either — although it has talked about creating an isolated national network before. Here’s hoping the new network will be a compliment to the Persian web, and not a substitute.
[Image credit: yeowatzup, Flickr]
Filed under: Internet
Iran announces plans to create isolated local internet system, fate of global access unknown originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Sep 2012 18:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Back in January, Google bowed down to corporate monoliths and started censoring “piracy-related searches” containing terms like BitTorrent, torrent, RapidShare, etc, so that they won’t appear on Google’s autocomplete and instant search results. Looks like The Pirate Bay is the latest to be added to the list. TorrentFreak points out what you can see in the screecap above: “Piratebay” no longer returns quick results related to the embattled service’s domain. [TorrentFreak via The Next Web] More »
India’s in the midst of a security crisis and has asked Twitter to curtail “inflammatory messages” or prepare to face legal action, according to the Times of India. The country has shut down numerous websites, while Google and Facebook have already pledged to remove any threatening content. Officials reportedly said that Twitter “failed to cooperate” in efforts to curb messages or help the government find their source, despite an earlier pledge by the social network to censor content when a country demanded it. Indian ISPs have started blocking the service’s accounts, according to TNW, but not Twitter itself, as the site first reported. In any case, the country still has a long way to go to catch the censorship leader.
Filed under: Internet
Twitter warned by Indian government to kibosh inflammatory tweets originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 07:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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