Last week, as protest rocked Tibet, the news was not only of the protests themselves but also of the role of the Internet in bringing news of those protests to a global audience. However, it was unclear whether the overall Internet story was hopeful or pessimistic. Did the Tibet case show critical weaknesses in the ability of China to control the Internet or was it just another story of oppression and censorship? On one hand, the protests demonstrated the capacity
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Last week hundreds of Tibetan monks took to the streets in and near the Tibetan capital of Lhasa to protest Chinese rule. Although the heavily censored Chinese media refused to cover the story, both Tibetans and foreign tourists used the Internet to get the news out. cell phone image of protests published on the site of a Tibetan rights NGO based in India According to the Vancouver Sun, “Amateur cellphone photos and video clips showing what were described as confrontations
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I've been blogging a lot recently about Fouad Mourtada, the young Moroccan man sentenced to three years in jail for posting a joke profile of the King's brother on Facebook. Yet there is another Fouad - Fouad Alfarhan - who has been in jail for three months with no release imminent. Fouad, who is a politically vocal blogger, was arrested on December 10th, and an online campaign to free him started soon after. However, when President Bush visited Saudi Arabia
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Last Friday, Moroccan computer engineer Fouad Mourtada was sentenced to 3 years in jail for posting a fake profile of Prince Rachid (the King of Morocco's brother).His sister Amina has set up a web page www.helpfouad.com to push for the decision to be reversed. Part of this effort (more actions to come) is a petition to free Fouad. Please click the image below to sign the petition:
Wondering exactly how the Burmese government sent down the country's whole Internet structure? Then check out this new report from the OpenNet Initiative, available for download here.
One of the most serious limitations on the ability of activists to use the Internet to organize for political change is that freedom of the Internet is inversely proportional to political oppression. That is, the greater the need for Internet organizing methods, the less the ability of activists to make use of those tools. In short, It is most difficult to use the Internet for activism in countries in which that activism is most necessary. This is no coincidence, of
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The exile site Irrawaddy.com posted these images e-mailed from those still in Burma I wish I had more time and knowledge to devote to the shutting down of the Internet and phone lines in Burma (Myanmar). As the New York Times reports, until last Friday, text messages, cell phone and digital camera images, and e-mail accounts were pouring out of Burma showing in vivid detail how the Burmese government is repressing the pro-democracy rallies there. Even as a means of
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Here's an older video from last December of an episode of Al Jazeera's "The Listening Post." It's about Internet censorship and how to evade it by using tools like Psiphon. My talented colleagues at the Citizen Lab, Ron Deibert and Nart Villeneuve, talk about their product and I give a short comment about the role of business in the last 40 seconds.
Why do people want to be "on the Internet?" One of the main reasons is simple freedom. The Internet is a rare example of a true, modern, functional anarchy. There is no "Internet Inc." There are no official censors, no bosses, no board of directors, no stockholders.Today that paragraph, written in 1993, seems naive and ill-informed. There certainly are censors on the Internet. Look at China and Saudi Arabia. While there is no "Internet Inc." the Internet is most certainly
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A man (center) wears a gas mask to protest a proposed toxic chemical plant in Xiamen Despite the fact that China has the most elaborate system of internet censorship in the world, creative Chinese activists are still finding ways to use the medium for political activism. On June 1, one million residents of coastal Xiamen protested against the proposed construction of a toxic chemical plant near the city center. Cell phones and the internet made it possible. The Chinese blogger
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