|
| Recent
Articles |
CALEA Argument Scoffed At By Judge
A lawyer for the FCC found a Washington DC appellate panel skeptical of requests from the Bush Administration for easier wiretapping of online telephone calls.
The CIA Tracking Blogs
It seems that big business are not the only ones interested in tracking online blogs, the CIA has launched an initiative to track the blogosphere.
Congress Vote Loses On Net Neutrality
The U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee voted 34-22 against a bill that was supposed to aid in the fight for net neutrality.
States Look To Tax Your Digital Assets Off
More and more states, especially ones with Democrat
controlled legislatures, CNet points out, are dipping
into the digital media pot by imposing taxes on...
Windows Mobile Wins Big Government Contract
Bink
reports that Microsoft's Windows Mobile has
won a contract from the U.S. Census Bureau for 500,000
handsets...
Indian Army Sees Threat in Google Earth
The Indian army is a little freaked-out that Google Earth shows satellite images of their strategic installations.
Outook Not Ready For Indiana Legislature
Indiana, which straddles the time zone line between Eastern and Central time, has long had its own weird limbo time zone.
State Department Schools Us on Blogs
The US Department of State hosted a webchat with David Kline. For those of you who might not know David, he wrote blog! how the newest media revolution is changing politics, business, and culture.
Big Easy Broadband Battles BellSouth
Hurricane Katrina prompted New Orleans' chief information officer to open the municipal 512kbps mesh network to anyone who wanted to access it, but now faces the prospect of a shutdown and legal fight prompted by BellSouth.
Future of Credit Cards and Anti-wifi Laws
Phillip Torrone writes about the future of credit cards. Oh, I so want one. Patrick and I were having lunch with Tara Hunt, Rachel Clarke, Ernie Svenson Adriana Linares (lawyer tech expert), and Chris Messina. Patrick leans over and says "can I have more money?"
Even the Kremlin Has RSS Feeds
My last post on Dell has piqued my curiosity...
|
|
|
|
05.30.06
Irrepressible.Info Fights Censorship
 By
David A. Utter
A new site developed by Amnesty International with the help of long-time supporter The Observer UK and the Open Net Initiative provides a way to republish snippets of content from websites banned by various governments on one's blog or site.
The Irrepressible.Info website unveiled by Amnesty International takes up the cause of jailed Chinese journalist Shi Tao as well as supporting the concept of the Internet as a vehicle for political freedom and not repression.
Amnesty and The Observer teamed up on the creation of the Irrepressible.Info website. There, site and blog publishers can pick up code for their sites that displays snippets of content from other websites. Those snippets come from sites that normally cannot be viewed in particular countries due to government interference.
By placing those snippets on websites that have not been banned, the project makes a little bit of information available to the reader who may be in a company that practices censorship.
"Internet repression is reported in countries like China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria," the project said. "People are persecuted and imprisoned simply for criticizing their government, calling for democracy and greater press freedom or exposing human rights abuses, online."
One person has been imprisoned for the crime of revealing a state secret to foreign entities via an email from his Yahoo account, namely China's advisory to news publications regarding the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Journalist Shi Tao's ten-year sentence comes in for particular attention from the project, with a link to details of his case and a call for people to contact the Chinese government and Yahoo about working toward his release.
The companies behind the three top search engines found themselves garnering particular attention from the project:
IT companies have helped build the systems that enable surveillance and censorship to take place. Yahoo! have supplied email users' private data to the Chinese authorities, helping to facilitate cases of wrongful imprisonment. Microsoft and Google have both complied with government demands to actively censor Chinese users of their services.
Irrepressible.Info also calls upon its visitors to sign a pledge about political freedom on the Internet. In November, Amnesty will present its request for greater online freedom and the number of people who have signed the pledge to a United Nations conference on the issue.
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
|
|
