White bells

Internet Censorship in China and Australia

With Secretary of State Clinton’s speech on Thursday (USA time) added to the Google challenge of China’s net filtering, I wanted to look at the overall situation and then what we experience here in Australia. I was surprised to discover considerable local political censoring. The videocast from the New America Foundation offers an initial overview of the current situation.

My notes from “Authority, Meet Technology: Will China’s Great Firewall Hold?” http://www.newamerica.net/events/2010/authority_meet_technology

Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation, Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

• 31 per cent of world lives under internet censorship.
• Do we want to live in a world where knowledge is based on the whim of censors?
• Thomas Jefferson said the only foundation for legitimate government is the will of its people and to protect its free expression should be its first order.
• There are now honour killings of women in the Middle East when they use social media

Rebecca MacKinnon, Fellow – Open Society Institute, Co-Founder – Global Voices Online

• The internal filtering in China is only one aspect of censoring. Domestic ISPs are held responsible for their content and if not performing will lose their licence. Censorship is outsourced to the private sector.
• Circumvention technology can only be used to access external websites.
• ISP providers are awarded self-discipline awards if they follow the internal policy.
• Censorship is spreading worldwide. It is not just a China problem. Google is concerned about the loss of free and open internet.
• Governments such as France, Italy and Australia are considering ‘filtering’.
• A Google executive who criticized Italy’s policy is now charged with a criminal offence.
• Google.cn has acquiesced to government control and this is now being cited by other countries wanting filtering.
• However, Google.com has always been available within China.
• In the long term, China’s ability to innovate and prosper is suffering from censorship and control.
• The central government is flummoxed by Google’s public stand. There are internal debates within the patchwork of ministries.
• The internet has forced us to consider governance and cross-border allegiances.

Evgeny Morozov, Contributing Editor – Foreign Policy Magazine, Yahoo! Fellow, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy – Georgetown University

• The Chinese government is not a reliable business partner.
• Cyber attacks will continue if Google.cn shuts down because dissidents have useful information in their email accounts.
• Russia is the major source of attacks followed by Brazil.
• Software piracy is being used by governments to crack down on NGOs. If they don’t have licensed Windows, they get shut down.
• Russia censors the internet less than Australia. Egypt has no censorship but activists are threatened with violence.
• Activists are endangering themselves by having a web presence in many countries.

Tim Wu, Schwartz Fellow – New America Foundation, Professor of Law – Columbia  Law School, Contributing Writer, Slate

• In China, the media is a regulated industry.
• Establishing Google.cn was worth trying and over the 5 years, there has been controversy within Google.
• Filtering can be considered a trade barrier. The WTO will now challenge China over filtering because internal providers are being favoured.
• The world is moving towards a set of national internets away from the previous global network.

Comments from the floor

• No training for analysis and students are unable mentally to access the information. Education is China’s greatest weakness because of the lack of freedom.
• There is a lack of interest in alternative points of view – it is anti-Chinese.  But in the USA there are people who only believe Fox News.
• Most Chinese citizens welcome filtering

Several paragraphs from Google’s Australian blog.

“Our views on Mandatory ISP Filtering”, Official Google Australia Blog, News and notes from Google Down Under, 16 December 2009, http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/12/our-views-on-mandatory-isp-filtering.html

At Google we are concerned by the Government’s plans to introduce a mandatory filtering regime for Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Australia, the first of its kind amongst western democracies. Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide. We have a bias in favour of people’s right to free expression. While we recognise that protecting the free exchange of ideas and information cannot be without some limits, we believe that more information generally means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.

Some limits, like child pornography, are obvious. No Australian wants that to be available – and we agree. Google, like many other Internet companies, has a global, all-product ban against child sexual abuse material and we filter out this content from our search results. But moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information.

Worth reading the rest. So it was with surprise that I found censoring of the internet is flourishing here.

“Internet censorship in Australia”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia

In 2008, the Australian Labor Party introduced a policy of mandatory Internet filtering for all Australians. While the policy has not yet come into force, it has generated substantial opposition, with only a few groups in support. The Labor Party does not have enough votes in the Senate to enact any legislation to support the filter, so that the filter has “effectively been scuttled” unless the government is able to implement the filter by other means.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) maintains a blacklist, since leaked, of websites which would form the basis for the mandatory filter. It has issued a take-down notice and threatened fines of $11,000 per day to at least one website hosted in Australia which contained a link to material on this blacklist.

On Tuesday 15 December 2009, it was announced that new legislation, entitled “Measures to improve safety of the internet for families”, would be introduced to support mandatory Internet filtering.

Enforcement

In 2002, New South Wales Police Minister Michael Costa attempted, without success, to shut down three protest websites by appealing to the then-communications minister Richard Alston, The Green Left Weekly stated these were Melbourne Indymedia and S11 websites, and that the Australian Broadcasting Authority cleared them of breaching government regulations on 30 October 2002.

Also in 2002, and under the terms of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the Federal Court ordered Dr Fredrick Töben to remove material from his Australian website which denied aspects of The Holocaust and vilified Jews.

In 2006, Richard Neville published a “spoof” website that had a fictional transcript of John Howard apologising to Aboriginal Australians. The website was forcibly taken offline by the government with no recourse.

In March 2009, after a user posted a link to a site on ACMA’s blacklist on the Whirlpool forum, Whirlpool’s service provider, Bulletproof Networks, was threatened with fines of $11,000 per day if the offending link was not removed. The same link in an article on EFA’s website was removed in May 2009 after ACMA issued a “link-deletion notice”, and the EFA took the precautionary step of also removing indirect links to the material in question.

After the Australian government announced plans to mandate Internet filtering in Australia in December 2009, an anti-censorship website hosted on stephenconroy.com.au … was taken offline by auDA after only 24 hours of being published online

Topics targeted for censorship

Euthanasia: On 22 May 2009 it was disclosed in the press, citing wikileaks.org, that the Australian Government had added Dr Philip Nitschke’s online Peaceful Pill Handbook (hosted at www.yudu.com), which deals with the topic of voluntary euthanasia, to the blacklist maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority used to filter internet access to citizens of Australia.

Video Games: In June 2009, it was confirmed that the Government’s proposed internet censorship regime would block downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard, such as Ebay and Amazon.

Racism: In January 2010, the Encyclopedia Dramatica article “Aboriginal” was removed from the search engine results of Google Australia, following a complaint that its content was racist. George Newhouse, the lawyer for the complainant, claims the site is “illegal” and should be blocked by the mandatory internet filter. A search on terms related to the article will produce a message that one of the results has been removed after a legal request relating to Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act 1975.

GetUp! … launched a campaign in Australia to raise awareness of the Australian Government’s flawed plans to introduce internet censorship. The campaign impersonated the Australian Federal Government by presenting internet censorship as a mock consumer product branded as Censordyne, a parody of the toothpaste brand, Sensodyne.

GetUp! raised over $45,000 in donations from the general public during July 2009 to see the Censordyne commercial on TV and on Qantas flights during the month of August 2009, where all Australian politicians would be travelling to Canberra. Following the Censordyne campaign launch, Qantas chose to censor the anti-censorship campaign from their flights. It was later revealed that David Epstein, the Qantas executive who stopped the Censordyne campaign from running on Qantas flights was the former chief of staff for the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

So, internet censorship here is targeting political issues rather than the stated ‘protect children from porn’. I will look further into this issue especially as internet censoring may become a trade barrier issue..

Today’s Podcast

Cathleen Schine, “Growing Up Female”, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins, Little, Brown.

Cathleen Schine

In When Everything Changed, Gail Collins picks up the saga of women and their role in the culture, economy, and political life of the United States where she left off in America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (2003). That exhilarating earlier volume began with the Mayflower and ended in the Seventies. Lively, always entertaining, and frequently enlightening, When Everything Changed is a worthy sequel. Its subtitle is “The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present,” and amazing it is. In half a century, Collins shows us, everything really has changed. And yet…

http://media.nybooks.com/012110_schine.mp3

Not as spectacular as the 5 October 2009 photo but quite stately (at our back door)

Public Transport

The Lane Cove Tunnel is now under administration – traffic forecasts were optimistic. Corruption is apparently still rife at the State Rail Authority. The head of Sydney Ferries has apparently run up huge personal charges on his business credit card. The Metro is on-again off-again. There is very little positive news on our public transport and public-private infrastructure.

When I worked in the City, I used CityRail to get to Circular Quay, Town Hall or Central and at times it would test my patience but overall I usually got to work and back home. Since September 2009, I have been using a combination of rail, bus and ferry to get about and I am impressed. The key to successful arrival is the two internet sites, CityRail (http://www.cityrail.info/timetables/#landingPoint) and Sydney Buses (http://www.sydneybuses.info/timetables.htm) that are linked.

Example 1: To be at Dover Heights by 09:30 during the pre-Christmas period. I estimated driving would take a minimum of 90 minutes due to the bottlenecks that form trying to get across Southern Cross Drive. I caught the train to Redfern, train to Bondi Junction and then bus to my destination – total time, 55 minutes which made me early so had time to look at the Pacific Ocean. And the bus driver let me know when I was at my destination.

Example 2: To be at Harbord by 11:00. The website recommended two choices, train to Chatswood and then bus, or train to Circular Quay then ferry and bus. I choose the ferry option and:

1. I was surprised at the number of bicycles wheeled off the Manly Ferry at the Quay;
2. I was surprised at the number of bike racks on the ferry;
3. I was very surprised by the several hundred bikes locked into the racks at the Manly ferry terminal; and,
4. I thoroughly enjoyed the stretch-out comfort and the work-tables so I could finish my report.

The bus arrived on time and again; the driver dropped me off at the right stop.

Example 3: Last week I had to go to Liverpool and normally it’s a reasonably quick train ride but the rail was closed from Fairfield to Campbelltown for upgrading so bus connections were from Fairfield. With some apprehension I chose public transport rather than driving and was impressed by the bus service. It was regular, well organized and efficient. No hassles with tickets and plenty of busses. The additional time was of no consequence as I was able to enjoy the amazing multi-ethnic range of travelers at Liverpool. And I arrived at my appointment on time.

Example 4: Yesterday at Newtown, the driver waited for me to run up the street to return to Xanadu. I really appreciated his courtesy especially as the bus was air-conditioned.

I have these positive experiences every day and thoroughly enjoy the mix of train, bus and ferry. And because of the efficiency of Sydney’s public transport I can see letting go the second car is becoming more painless.

However, regarding busses, I am not struggling with a pusher and a child on foot, I am still agile enough to handle the multi-step entry on some of the older busses, and I am not attempting to get on with a full shopping trolley. For a number of people, bus travel can be difficult but more of the new busses are designed to cope with these needs.

Today’s Podcasts

“Authority, Meet Technology: A Slate/New America Foundation discussion about China, Google, and Internet freedom”, Slate, 21 January 2010, http://www.newamerica.net/events/2010/authority_meet_technology

Western media companies have long been faced with ethical challenges in order to access the vast Chinese market. But after accepting Beijing’s censorship and a series of attacks on its network, Google announced last week that it has had enough, and it is threatening to pull out of China.  China aspires to be considered a trustworthy global economic leader, but plenty of companies doing business in that country share Google’s frustration at having to abide by different rules in the Middle Kingdom.

How will the China Internet skirmish shake out? What lessons or cautionary tales does China’s experience offer repressive governments and their tech-savvy opponents in places like Iran and Cuba? What, if anything, should the Obama administration do to keep the Web free, worldwide? On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to outline the administration’s plans in a major address on Internet freedom.

What startled me was the mention of Australian censorship in the forthcoming legislation. I will check this out further tomorrow.