GreatFirewall
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Google confirms secret Dragonfly project, but won’t say what it is
Representatives from a number of major tech companies appeared before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Energy and Transportation today, discussing data privacy and concerns over consumer protection. Google sent its new chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, to the hearing, who was questioned multiple times over rumors that Google is working on a censored search engine for China. VentureBeat reports that Enright confirmed a project codenamed Dragonfly, though he stopped short of discussing what that project entailed. "I am not clear on the contours of what is in scope or out of scope for that project," Enright told Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Twitch is reportedly blocked in China
Last month, Twitch became the third most popular free app on China's App Store as users wanting to watch the Asian Games flocked to the app. But now, Abacus reports, residents in China are finding that Twitch is no longer accessible and that the Twitch app has been removed from the country's App Store.
Facebook tiptoes into China by opening a startup incubator
After years of trying and failing to get its social network unblocked in China (where it has been unavailable since 2009), Facebook is trying a different approach to make inroads into the vast market. It has opened a startup incubator in Hangzhou, the Washington Post reported.
Senators want to know if Apple fought back on China's VPN ban
Apple CEO Tim Cook wasn't pleased about pulling VPN software from the company's App Store in China, but this July, it happened anyway. As a result, many users who once counted on such software to dodge the country's Great Firewall were left to their own devices (and we've explored the situation at length here). Now, senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) have called on Cook in a letter to explain in detail how that process went down, out of concern that Apple is "enabling the Chinese government's censorship and surveillance of the internet."
China blocks WhatsApp users from sending photos and video
Many WhatsApp users in China aren't able to send photos and videos to one another, and in at least a few cases, people aren't able to send text messages either. Exactly why this partial ban is happening at the moment isn't clear, but the New York Times reports that Facebook's other messaging application might soon be fully blocked in the region thanks to strict censorship laws.
China orders telecoms to block personal VPNs by February
China declared that virtual private networks were illegal back at the start of the year, and now it's giving telecoms no choice but to fall in line. Bloomberg sources understand that the government has told carriers to block individual access to VPNs by February 1st. Companies can still use VPNs internally, and will reportedly be allowed to use leased lines (registered with officials, of course) to access the full internet, but everyone else appears to be out of luck.
China just made VPNs illegal
Chinese authorities block access to big-name websites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and numerous others, and to thwart these restrictions, many residents on the mainland use virtual private networks. Starting this week, that could be a crime. Use of VPNs and special cable connections in China must now be approved by the government, essentially making these services illegal in the country.
China bans news sites from using social media as a source
The Cyberspace Administration of China put national news outlets on notice this weekend, warning them not to base reports on social media sources without strict verification of the facts. The statement came less than a week after the appointment of a new head of the regulatory body, and cites various, apparently bogus stories published off the back of chatter on popular services like Weibo and WeChat. "It is forbidden to use hearsay to create news or use conjecture and imagination to distort the facts," a translation of the warning reads.
China is blocking access to Medium
The People's Republic of China is notorious for keeping its citizens from accessing free media, be that online or offline. Thousands of sites are blocked by the country's "great firewall," and there's a new entry to that list: Medium. According to GreatFire.org, a site that keeps tabs on China's censorship efforts, Medium.com has been blocked entirely within the country since April 12th.
China tells the world to respect its censorship
Chinese president Xi Jinping opened the World Internet Conference by telling world leaders to respect other nation's cyber sovereignty. The leader went on to say that every country has the right to govern the web in accordance with local laws, and that China stands against "internet hegemony." The move reinforces China's right to suppress information on a whim, like when it shuttered Instagram during the Hong Kong democracy protests. By making it an issue of sovereignty, the country is effectively shouting "back off" to rivals who would dare criticize its heavy-handed attitude toward censorship.
Thailand's gamers fight to save the open internet
Thailand's military junta has already banned Facebook (a few times), Bitcoin and the game Tropico, but that's not enough for the censor-happy dictatorship. The nation is now kicking around the idea of a single gateway -- effectively one internet connection between Thailand and the rest of the world. With that in place, the government would have complete control over the country's internet traffic, making censorship and surveillance a breeze. Naturally, this so-called Great Firewall of Thailand isn't something that its citizens are taking lying down, which is why several government websites were taken down in a co-ordinated DDoS attack last week.
China's 'Great Cannon' shoots down websites it doesn't like
According to a new report from Citizen Lab, China has not only built itself a "Great Cannon" but has already fired it as well. This potent online weapon seems to be capable of intercepting internet traffic at the national level then directing it at specific networks to knock them offline. China's already widely suspected of being behind the recent attack against Github, which was overloaded for nearly a week via "an ongoing and evolving large DDOS attack." Now it appears that Github's attackers used the Cannon to redirect that traffic from Chinese search engine giant Baidu to cripple the website. All reportedly because the San Francisco-based website hosted a pair of pages that link to content banned in China.
Gmail slowly coming back to life in China
China's Gmail users have been the better of four days cut off from their messages, but that's slowly starting to change. According to Google's own transparency report, traffic to the email service is starting to pick up once more, signaling an end (for now, anyway) to yet another issue plaguing the search giant's operations in mainland China. The sailing isn't completely smooth just yet, though: The Financial Times reports that not everyone can access their emails, and some of those who can are experiencing delays when trying to send some.
China wages war on internet porn and rumor-mongering (again)
If you're a porn connoisseur or troll in China, chances are your year hasn't been great so far. Some 110 Chinese porn websites and 3,300 social accounts on services like Sina Weibo and WeChat have gone dark since January as part of the government's new Cleaning The Web 2014 campaign, and that crackdown shows little sign of stopping. It's not just porn that's being hunted, either -- this rigmarole is just as much about clamping down on odious internet rumors as it is about rooting out NSFW pics and slash fiction.
Microsoft: Bing's altered Chinese search results are a glitch, not censorship
Anti-censorship blogs have found that when using Bing, it appears the Chinese government's muzzle for "damaging" web-based news extends beyond its borders, but Microsoft says that's not the case. Bing search queries are returning with wildly different results for Chinese-language users on US soil, according to Greatfire. The site tested a series of searches in Chinese for hot-button topics ranging from the Dalai Lama, Tiananmen Square and the corrupt government official Bo Xilai. In the case of the Tibetan spiritual leader, results don't include his Wikipedia page, personal website or various news reports like they do for searches in English. Instead, Chinese-language Bing users both domestic and foreign found links to a state-sponsored documentary and China's heavily censored version of Wikipedia, Baidu Baike. If a user is in mainland China, Bing denotes that the search results have been altered, but not so in the US according to The Guardian. Bing's Senior Director Stefan Weitz has denied this and tells us that it wasn't complying with China's stringent legal requirements -- it was a glitch. According to a statement by Weitz, an error caused "an incorrect results removal notification for some searches noted in the report" but that the results were unaltered outside of China. However, Redmond didn't note whether or not the error had been fixed. We've included the full statement from Microsoft after the break. Update: In a blog post, Weitz has once again spoken up to "emphatically confirm" that Microsoft is not engaging in political censorship for Chinese language queries performed outside of China. He says the error was only in the Chinese removal notification showing up incorrectly, and that Bing is "in the process of fixing the issue." [Image credit: Freddie boy/Flickr]
In a bid to control the internet, China tries to put the squeeze on mobile news apps
It's like Jeff Goldblum's neurotic, chaos theory spouting character in Jurassic Park said: "life, uh, finds a way." Or, in this case, it's the internet that can't be kept down at heel. According to a Reuters report, the Chinese government's State Internet Information Office has instituted a "crackdown" on rogue mobile news apps that purportedly transmit images of pornography and other "obscene information" to children. But what's more likely, however, is that the apps in question serve as a workaround for citizens seeking news reports from established foreign media outlets; news that would otherwise be censored. The move could see any offending app makers, which includes popular apps like Zaker and Chouti, effectively shut down if they fail to fall in line and sanitize their content. China's long had a history of strangling internet access, but this development, coupled with recent news of censorship as usual for its Shanghai free trade zone, highlights just how difficult it is for the state to control the web. And with new social networks cropping up every day and promising novel means of spreading illegal information, that fight's fast becoming a losing battle.
Chinese state media squashes claims of less restricted internet in Shanghai zone (updated)
A few days ago, the South China Morning Post claimed that blocks put on websites like Twitter, Facebook and The New York Times were to be lifted in Shanghai's new free-trade zone. And the justification made sense, too: relax restrictions to make visitors happy, and potentially cash in on accelerated foreign investment as a result. Plausible, sure, but according to state-run news outlet the People's Daily, completely untrue. As it turns out, the Chinese powers that be allegedly have no intention of allowing web traffic in the free-trade zone to circumvent the Great Firewall, which means visiting Twitter addicts will still have to turn to Weibo for their social network / microblogging fix. [Image credit: Wikimedia Commons] Update: People.com.cn (not the People's Daily, as reported earlier) has since pulled its post. There's no explanation as to why.
China said to be unblocking sites like Facebook, Twitter and the NYT, but only in a small part of Shanghai
Given how large a mobile market China has become, and its role in gadget manufacturing globally, we sometimes forget the government of this increasingly tech-aware country still dictates what corners of the web its peoples can see. Today, the South China Morning Post reports the state has decided to unblock several foreign internet sites "considered politically sensitive," but only in the free-trade zone of Shanghai's Pudong New Area. According to "government sources," the move to open access to sites including Facebook, Twitter (both of which were cut off in 2009) and The New York Times (blocked last year) is so visitors can "live and work happily in the free-trade zone." The greater goal is to make the area more attractive to foreign companies, beyond the favorable regulatory and tax environment, of course. Furthermore, the Chinese are allegedly beckoning overseas firms to come in and "provide internet services" for the new, 30 square kilometer zone. The Great Firewall may remain firmly up for the rest of the country and its billion-odd population, but one step at a time and all that. [Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Google quietly removed search warning message in China in early December 2012
Google's search engine has a turbulent history in China, from search results being censored to temporary shutdowns. The company's most recent effort to serve mainland China with unfiltered search results met with an untimely end back in early December, Google confirms -- a warning previously told mainlanders when the search term they were using had met with issues (read: Chinese government intrusion causing lengthy connection times) for other users. GreatFire discovered that said message no longer popped up when searching for various censored terms on Google Search in China, and while Google's confirming that fact, it's unclear what the exact reasoning is. Given the rocky history between Google and China, it seems likely that China responded in turn to Google's efforts with its own -- or as The Guardian puts it, "Google concedes defeat in China censorship battle." Whether that's the case or not remains to be seen, but Chinese Google searchers should beware that your experience may result in some unfortunate connection issues from time to time (as much as 90 seconds), per China's censorship policies.
Google services grind to a halt in China, political transition suspected as the culprit (update)
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.
