The shift which could affect a swath of users from researchers to businesses suggests that China is increasingly worried about the power of the internet, experts said.

It does appear the crackdown is becoming more intense, but the internet is also more powerful than it has ever been, said Emily Parker, author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are, a book about the power of the internet in China, Cuba, and Russia. Beijings crackdown on the internet is commensurate with the power of the internet in China.

China still has not clamped down to its full ability, the experts said, and in many cases the cat-and-mouse game continues. One day after Apples move last week, people on Chinese social media began circulating a way to gain access to those tools that was so easy that even a non-techie could use it. (It involved registering a persons app store to another country where VPN apps were still available.)

Still, Thursdays test demonstrates that China wants the ability to change the game in favor of the cat.

A number of Chinese internet service providers said on their social media accounts, websites, or in emails on Thursday that Chinese security officials would test a new way to find the internet addresses of services hosting or using illegal content. Once found, these companies said, the authorities would ask internet service providers to tell their clients to stop. If the clients persisted, they said, the service providers and Chinese officials would cut their connection in a matter of minutes.

The Ministry of Public Security did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

Studies suggest that anywhere from tens of millions to well over a hundred million Chinese people use VPNs and other types of software to get around the Great Firewall. While the blocks on foreign television shows and pornography ward off many people, they often pose only minor challenges to Chinas huge population of web-savvy internet users.

Chinas president, Xi Jinping, has presided over years of new internet controls, but he has also singled out technology and the internet as critical to Chinas future economic development. As cyberspace has become more central to everything that happens in China, government controls have evolved.

It is difficult to figure out the extent of the new efforts, since many users and businesses will not discuss them publicly for fear of getting on the bad side with the Chinese government. But some frequent users said that getting around the restrictions had become increasingly difficult.

One student, who has been studying in the United States and was back in China for summer vacation, said that her local VPN was blocked. She said she had taken the period as a sort of meditation away from social media and left a note on Facebook to warn her friends why she was a gone girl.

A doctoral student in environmental engineering in at a university in China said it had become harder to do research without Google, though his university had found alternative publications so that students did not always need the internet. He has since found a new way to get around the Great Firewall, the student said, without disclosing what it was.

Close observers of the Chinese internet said some VPNs still work and that China could still do a lot more to intensify its crackdown.

We do think that if the government has decided to do so, it could have shut down much more VPN usage right now, said a spokesman for VPNDada, a website created in 2015 to help Chinese users find VPNs that work.

If the government had sent more cats, the mice would have a tougher time, said the spokesman, who declined to be named because of sensitivities around the groups work in China. I guess they didnt do so because they need to give some air for people or businesses to breathe.

Chinas online crackdowns are often cyclical. The current climate is in part the result of the lead-up to a key Chinese Communist Party meeting, the 19th Party Congress this autumn. Five years ago, ahead of a similar meeting, VPNs were hit by then-unprecedented disruptions.

Much like economic policy or foreign affairs, censorship in China is part of a complicated and often imperfect political process. Government ministries feel pressure ahead of the party congress to show they are effective or can step in if a problem appears, analysts said.

So its definitely not an apocalypse for VPNs, said Paul Triolo, head of global technology at Eurasia Group, a consultancy.

Just a more complex environment for users to navigate, and new capabilities and approaches give China better ability to shut off some delta of VPN use at a time and place of Beijings choosing, he said.

Chinas population is learning to deal with those difficulties at a younger age. Earlier this summer, Chinas internet giant Tencent began limiting the time that people under 18 were allowed to play the popular online game Honor of Kings to an hour a day for those under 12, and two hours for those age 12 to 18.

So Chinese youths have taken to an age-old solution: getting a fake ID.

Your Honor of Kings being limited? Interested in getting an over-18 identification? read a recent advertisement on Chinese social media. No problem. Get in touch for a low-price ID.

Carolyn Zhang contributed research from Shanghai. Adam Wu contributed research from Beijing.

A version of this article appears in print on August 4, 2017, on Page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Chinas Internet Censors Test a New Way to Shut Down Access.

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China's Internet Censors Play a Tougher Game of Cat and Mouse - New York Times

There's a grassroots movement brewing to kill the new HBO docudrama "Confederate" before it even begins filming, let alone airs. The Guardian has a useful summary of the controversy so far:

Confederate, the new HBO show from the Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, was announced in a press release a few weeks ago and is slated to begin filming sometime after the final season of Thrones, which will probably air in 2018. But already there seems to be little appetite for the series, which plans to take a revisionist approach to American history, imagining a world in which the South successfully seceded from the union and slavery persists "as a modern-day institution" ... Since the project was revealed in early July, it has become a kind of cultural albatross for HBO, and especially Benioff and Weiss, each of whom have fielded criticisms over the years for both the overwhelming whiteness of Game of Thrones ...

Roxanne Gay, an associate professor at Purdue University, chimed in on the opinion pages of the New York Times:

Each time I see a reimagining of the Civil War that largely replicates what actually happened, I wonder why people are expending the energy to imagine that slavery continues to thrive when we are still dealing with the vestiges of slavery in very tangible ways. ... My exhaustion with the idea of "Confederate" is multiplied by the realization that this show is the brainchild of two white men who oversee a show that has few people of color to speak of and where sexual violence is often gratuitous and treated as no big deal. I shudder to imagine the enslaved black body in their creative hands. And when I think about the number of people who gave this project the green light, the number of people who thought this was a great idea, my weariness grows exponentially. ...

Let's put aside complaints about the "whiteness" of "Game of Thrones." It makes sense for a fantasy set in a Medieval European-like fantasyland to use predominantly (but not exclusively) European-looking actors, just as it made sense that the 1980 miniseries "Shogun" used many Japanese actors or, for that matter, for the 1977 miniseries "Roots" to use black actors. If actors should be cast without reference to skin color or identity, than that should go both ways.

Let's also put aside the fact that alternative histories are not uncommon. "The Man in the High Castle" imagines the world if Germany and Japan won World War II. "Confederate States of America" is a deeply satirical look at what would happen if the South had won the Civil War. Philip Roth's The Plot against America imagines what would have happened if nativist Charles Lindbergh had defeated Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 and signed non-interference treaties with both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

What is truly discomforting about the current campaign to shut down "Confederate" is that neither those who are leading it nor those who are piling on in an international Twitter campaign have read a single line of its script. They have no idea how the writers will address issues of race and race relations, nor whether the alternative history will open the door to productive discussion and debate.

If the writers do a bad job, critics pan the show, and people stop watching, that's one thing. But to pre-emptively try to shut down a show sight unseen, that's different.

In a sense, what we are seeing increasingly appears to be the Western version of the Satanic Verses affair.

In that 1989 case, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses for blasphemy, even though neither he nor those around him had ever read the work.

At the time, dozens of writers stood up for Rushdie's right to write and publish. Today, most are silent, and the leading outlets of progressive thought side with the proverbial lynch mob. True, Khomeini's fatwa is an extreme example. No one is suggesting Benioff and Weiss be murdered, but the idea that it is proper to censor works without first reading their content in order to protect popular mores is similar.

Progressives might cry foul at a comparison between what they seek to do and what Khomeini did. After all, haven't conservatives also sought to censor? In the 1980s, many conservatives criticized the funding choices of the National Endowment for the Arts, especially in the wake of a racy Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit and the production of the "Piss Christ" photograph of the late 1980s. Recently, the Washington Post recalled those controversies:

Conservative Sens. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and Alphonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) took to the Senate floor in May 1989 "to question the NEA's funding procedures." Helms called Serrano "not an artist, he is a jerk," and D'Amato theatrically tore a reproduction of the work to shreds, calling it a "deplorable, despicable display of vulgarity." Meanwhile, more than 50 senators and 150 representatives contacted the NEA to complain about the exhibits. [Piss Christ artist Andres] Serrano still remembers being "shocked" by the angry reaction and, he told The Post on Sunday, how suddenly the work became a "political football." ... But the exhibit that pushed Helms over the edge was a retrospective of work by late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who Andrew Hartman, author of "A War for the Soul Of America: A History of the Culture Wars," wrote "became the Christian Right's bte noire." ... Like the exhibit containing "Piss Christ," it was partially, indirectly funded by the NEA. The exhibit featured 175 photographs. One hundred sixty-eight were inoffensive, such as images of carefully arranged flowers. The seven from his "X-Portfolio," though, were intensely provocative. One presented a finger inserted into a penis. Another was a self-portrait showing Mapplethorpe graphically inserting a bullwhip into his anus. Two displayed nude children.

What the Washington Post misses, however, is that the controversy was over public funding for such exhibits; it did not demand pre-emptive censorship over writers or artists. Likewise, when 25 years ago Vice President Dan Quayle famously criticized the television character Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock, his goal was not to censor the hit CBS sitcom, but rather simply to criticize its judgment. Likewise, criticisms of the Broadway play "Oslo" or the anti-Israel propaganda play "My Name is Rachel Corrie" focus on how they twist the truth or cherry-pick history rather than demand they be shuttered.

Criticism and censorship are not synonymous. The former advances productive debate; the latter seeks to avoid it. With "Confederate," it seems progressives are siding firmly with censorship as they argue against the right to tackle subjects which run afoul of their own narrow orthodoxy.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.

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On censorship of 'Confederate,' it's 'Satanic Verses' deja vu - Washington Examiner

Courts in modern times are generally protective of the First Amendment, specifically our freedoms of speech and press. On the whole, they vigorously oppose any attempt by government to minimize those essential liberties; they recognize that a free press is critical to any society that values expression and intellectual diversity. The Supreme Courts 1983 ruling inMinneapolis Star v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue(1983), striking down certain taxes on ink and paper, shows that attempts to regulate the media as a group, even when broadly applied, are considered unacceptable if they crowd out certain viewpoints.

The University of California San Diego (UCSD), a public university, attempted to do something similar when it defunded certain student organizations in a thinly veiled attempt to censor one organizations opinions. The Koala, a satirical newspaper funded by student activity fees, published an article mocking safe places that sparked controversy on campus and debate in the schools student government. In response, the student government enacted a Media Act that defunded all student-printed media organizations, in order to prevent the The Koala from publishing further articles that contradicted the student governments political sensibilities.

The Koalasued in an attempt to restore its funding, but the federal district court remarkably ruled against them. Cato has joined the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on an amicus brief supporting its claim.

There is a longstanding, constitutionally based tradition of public universities serving as conduits for freedom of expression, a tradition that UCSD has unceremoniously abandoned. By providing funding to certain groups and not others, the university is effectively restricting certain members of the public from a public forum, in blatant violation of the First Amendment.

The lower court misread well-established jurisprudence regarding the scope of such forums, and failed to consider the evidence of viewpoint discrimination prevalent in the schools Media Act. Not only does this rule have a discriminatory effect, but also it constitutes unconstitutional retaliation in direct response to the controversy surrounding The Koalas article.

In addition, the Supreme Court has established that student activity fee programs are required to respect viewpoint-neutrality, in order to ensure that political bias does not stifle speech. UCSD has violated all of these core constitutional principles in pursuit of political correctness and the comfort of ideological homogeneity.

In The Koala v. Khosla, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit should reverse the lower courts decision and stop UCSDs efforts to seek vengeance against student groups for satirical articles.

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Should the Koala Bear the Brunt of Censorship? - Cato Institute (blog)

BEIJING Moves by business giants Apple and Amazon to stop consumers from using censorship-skirting apps in China have renewed questions about the extent U.S. companies are willing to work with authorities to operate in the vast but tightly controlled Chinese market.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook attempted to defend the companys decision to remove dozens of apps designed to circumvent censorship from the Chinese version of its App Store.

In an earnings call for Apples quarterly financial report, Cook said China tightened its rules on virtual private networks, or VPNs, in 2015 and was making a renewed push to enforce them.

We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries, we follow the law wherever we do business, he said Tuesday.

By helping Chinese authorities curb the use of many popular VPNs, U.S. tech companies are seen as helping the Communist Party bolster what is already the worlds most elaborate and sophisticated censorship regime, often called the Great Firewall.

In addition to blocking the likes of Google and Facebook, Chinas censors shape what is published online, pull content deemed politically sensitive and, according to a recent study, intercept images sent via chat apps.

Cook said pulling some apps beats pulling out of the market.

We strongly believe that participating in markets and bringing benefits to customers is in the best interest of the folks there and in other countries, as well, he said. And so we believe in engaging with governments even when we disagree.

Amazon.com also was in the spotlight Wednesday after disclosures that the companys Chinese partner, Beijing Sinnet Technology, sent emails to clients advising them to delete tools used to circumvent censorship. The news was first reported by the New York Times.

An employee told The Washington Post that Sinnet sent clients emails Friday and again on Monday warning them to eliminate content that violates Chinese telecom laws. The instructions came from Chinas Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the employee said.

On Wednesday, calls to Amazon Web Services China office went unanswered. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Post.)

When Chinas only winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Liu Xiaobo, died in state custody last month, news of his death was all but scrubbed from the Web here. On some platforms, the candle emoji was blocked.

To get around these restrictions, millions of Chinese individuals and businesses use VPNs. Beijing knows this but so far has let the practice continue, in part because it is good for business and aids academic research.

It is not yet clear how the latest drive to regulate VPNs will play out. In the earnings call, Cook stressed that the company had removed some, but not all, apps.The fact that many VPNs remain could mean the government is focused on regulating the VPN industry, not eliminating it, leaving room for some use.

For a sector focused on privacy, that is still bad news.

Apple claims to just follow the law, but its just a convenient excuse,said Martin Johnson, the pseudonymous co-founder of GreatFire.org, a website that monitors Chinas Internet filtering and maintains an app to help Internet users get past the restrictions.In fact, they are actively helping the Chinese government expand its control globally.

When Apple removes an app from the App Store of a given country, it affects all users who have registered with an address in that country, regardless of their physical location, he added.

This means that, thanks to Apple, Beijing gets a degree of control of Chinese citizens anywhere in the world.

Yang Liu and Shirley Feng contributed to this report.

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Apple, Amazon help China curb the use of anti-censorship tools - Washington Post

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Posted: Aug 04, 2017 12:01 AM

Social media has become the boon and the bane of our political culture. Conservatives have a new, profound voice to go around and take down the media like never before. Overcoming the liberal chokehold of the liberal mainstream media, we the conservatives, the constitutionalists, the consistent libertarians are punching away at the stale, imposing media narrative. We got tired of hearing how great Barack Obama was, especially when Breitbart, Townhall.com, and the rest reported how untrue the narrative turned out to be.

Besides, when illegal aliens have taken your job or killed your kid, there is no amount of media-driven propaganda that can regain your trust or assure your confidence in the liberal talking points.

Social medias bane has become more prominent, too, and in ways that I had never expected. First, let me address the rising Anti-Semitism. I frequently post pro-Israel statements on my media profiles. I do not apologize for being a Zionist, and a vocal supporter of the only stable democracy in the Middle East. Enduring the Obama Administration, I wished that Benjamin Netanyahu were my president. Fortunately, President Trump has forged a renewed, stronger relationship with Israel.

Today, social media explodes with anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist hate more frequently than I care to admit. One of my tweets about Israel induced a unique firestorm of anti-Zionist hate. The hate I have witnessed on social media against Jews is pretty appalling. At Politicon 2017, Ben Shapiro had to address this disconcerting trend. At least we could talk about it, but the hatred of Jews and the attacks on Israel are getting heated and more prevalent. Why? Anonymity and efficiency to spread ones message could not be easier because of social media. Should we block it? In my opinion, no. The best defense to false or inflammatory speech is more speech.

Which brings me to the other threat looming over media: censorship. Twice in one week I have been blocked from posting on my Facebook profile. What?! Whats worse, Latinos for Trump like Harim Uzziel and Robert Latino Heat Herrera have been routinely blocked from posting their Facebook Live videos, articles, and other daily observations. Why? Illegals and their law-abiding amnesty-pandering supporters were reporting their posts, then getting them blocked. Latinos who support Trump detonate the left-wing narrative that opposition to illegal immigration is racist. Uzziel, an outspoken and outstanding Latino for Trump in LA, California, and perhaps even the country--is also Jewish, and proudly so. Are these attacks anti-Semitic, too?

The same censorship applies to Islam. Pamela Gellers Facebook page was shut down, then brought back following a large outcry. On the other hand, a close friend of mineanother Latina for Trump in Los Angeles--reported a Facebook page whose title read as follows: Mexican Pride Group: Kill All White People. The response she received from Facebook? The Community Standards review determined that there was nothing wrong. Really. If you dont believe me, read the attached photo (see above).

This ongoing censorship and repression of different points of view is not new, but only now is the growing, effective conservative movement taking note and fighting back. First Twitter came for Charles Johnson of GotNews.com. Then they took down Milos verified blue checkmark. Then Milos Twitter feed was suspended for good over a media battle discussing the crappy feminist version of The Ghostbusters. A meandering movie that got poor ticket sales and no reviews led to Free Speech provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos Twitter-demise.

And it has gotten worse. Hunter Avallone of Maryland, a post-Millennial taking on the liberal-progressive Pharisees of our day, lost his Twitter handle, too. Paul Joseph Watson, Dennis Prager, and others have reported the subtle censorship of their YouTube videos. Watsons latest report outlines YouTubes officious oversight with the left-wing Anti-Defamation League, which has deemed Pepe the Frog an anti-Semitic symbol.

Have we forgotten the leading conservative media lights who met with Facebook leaders to confront their media bias? The conservatives approached the meeting with intentions of negotiating some standard of fairness. So much for that approach. Now social media censorship has gotten dangerously close to home. For the past month and a half, Ive worked freelance as a guerrilla journalist with Joshua Caplan through Vessel News. Ive gone places with Facebook Live, exposing illegal alien town halls hosted by our own federal officials, including Congressman Lou Correa of Santa Ana, CA, as well as raucous events in city council meetings and during Trump supporter celebrations.

Now Caplan reports that his viewership reach has been cut down because other Facebook pages are losing their own reach and influence. Caplan had agreements with other Facebook page news sites, but they have recently cut the contracts since Facebook is coming down hard on them. Add to The Gateway Pundits lament about Facebook throttling Jim Hofts potential reading traffic, you can tell that Facebook has become Fascist-Book.

Within the last 24 hours, I learned that Dinesh DSouzas own Facebook was compromised, scuttling his outreach as well as the sales of his new book The Big Lie, exposing the totalitarian tendencies of the American Progressive Movement, which infiltrated the Democratic Party leading up to President Franklin Delano Roosevelts administration. They also inspired the Nazis under Adolf Hitler. Of course, this very serious message accompanied that latest update from DSouza: Ive been hearing of this happening to a lot of people, though most often its Facebook itself taking their pages down.

Pretty heavy stuff. For decades, the Saul Alinsky approach of shaming conservatives had successfully silenced the Right. Now that we are bolder than ever to speak, the Regressive Left is working overtime to suppress freedom of speech. If not through violence or the passage of draconian anti-free speech ordinances, they can pressure or assume the leadership over these multi-media platforms and shut down dissent and discourse. Enough. The next leg of the New Right, New Tea Party fight means targeting and taking on these social media platforms. We cannot afford to lose, since we have gained so much already.

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Anti-Social Media: Anti-Semitism and Censorship on the Rise - Townhall

Customers come to the newly opened Apple store in Shanghai, China.

VCG/Getty Images

Apple recently removed some of the virtual private networks from the App Store in China, making it harder for users there to get around internet censorship. Amazon has capitulated to China's censors as well; The New York Times reported this week that the company's China cloud service instructed local customers to stop using software to circumvent that country's censorship apparatus. While caving to China's demands prompts a vocal backlash, for anyone who follows US tech companies in China it was anything but surprising. Apple and Amazon have simply joined the ranks of companies that abandon so-called Western values in order to access the huge Chinese market.

Doing business in China requires playing by Chinese rules, and American tech companies have a long history of complying with Chinese censorship. Every time a new compromise comes to light, indignation briefly flares up in the press and on social media. Then, its back to business as usual. This isnt even the first time Apple has complied with Chinese censors. Earlier this year, the company removed New York Times apps from its Chinese store, following a request from Chinese authorities. "We would obviously rather not remove apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever do we business," Apple CEO Tim Cook said during Tuesday's earnings call, in response to the vanished VPN apps.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of American companies that have aided Chinese censorship. In 2005, Yahoo provided information that helped Chinese authorities convict a journalist, Shi Tao. Shi had sent an anonymous post to a US-based website. The post contained state secrets, according to authorities, and Shi was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Also in 2005, Microsoft shut down the blog of a Chinese freedom-of-speech advocate. A year later, Google agreed to censor its search results in China. Internal documents show that Cisco apparently saw China's "Great Firewall" as a choice opportunity to sell routers at around the same time. In 2006, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and Cisco faced a congressional hearing about their Chinese collaboration. I do not understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night," representative Tom Lantos said at the time.

Jeremy Hsu

Why Apple Is Losing Its Shine in China

Julia Greenberg

Netflix May Never Break Into China

Andy Greenberg

How the CIA Can Hack Your Phone, PC, and TV (Says WikiLeaks)

It turns out that some corporate leaders will sacrifice a good nights sleep to reach hundreds of millions of internet usersand potential customers. In 2014, LinkedIn launched a Chinese version of its service with the understanding that doing so would curtail freedom of expression. Users who posted politically sensitive content would get a message saying that their content would not be seen by LinkedIn members in China.

In a 2014 interview with The Wall Street Journal , LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner was upfront about the Chinese bargain. Were expecting there will be requests to filter content, Weiner said. We are strongly in support of freedom of expression and we are opposed to censorship, but thats going to be necessary for us to achieve the kind of scale that wed like to be able to deliver to our membership.

Perhaps LinkedIn figured that, as a business networking site, it could dodge political controversy. But when it comes to China, its never that simple. LinkedIns community, after all, includes China-based journalists. It wasnt long before users complained about receiving notices from LinkedIn that their posts were not available in China. Just this month, journalist Ian Johnson posted one of those notices on Twitter. Twitter is blocked in China, but some people there access it with circumvention technology. In the past, China-based activists have used Twitter to get their message to the outside world. Twitter is a rare American platform that offers relative freedom of expression to the Chinese who are willing to use it.

Bending to China's will doesn't guarantee success. China remains a tough market, even for those willing to censor. Derek Shen, formerly president of LinkedIn China, recently stepped down after the company had less-than-impressive results in China. Problems apparently included missed sales targets and failure to attract new users. In 2010 Google declared wholesale defeat in mainland China, citing problems with censorship and cybersecurity.

Censorship isn't the only challenge: US companies now have to contend with fierce Chinese rivals. Apple has struggled against domestic Chinese competition, including smartphone powerhouses Huawei and Oppo. Uber flailed against incumbent ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing before eventually selling its China operations to its local rival. When it comes to the internet, Chinese users arent necessarily longing to jump over the Great Firewall to gain access to overseas sites. Many are content with domestic products, particularly WeChat, a wildly popular messaging app.

Still, US companies will always try to break through in China. Facebook has eyed the mainland for a while. A Facebook entry may appear unlikely, especially as China temporarily blocked its WhatsApp messaging service. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears willing to go the distance; Facebook has reportedly worked on a censorship tool for the purposes of getting China's approval. Conventional wisdom once held that Facebook would not risk the public outcry following a decision to self-censor in China. But is that really true? All those other companies got away with it, and Facebook probably would too.

So will Apple. The company might take a beating in China, but it wont be because of its moral choices. That doesnt mean that the Chinese internet outlook is bleak. Despite pervasive censorship, information manages to get through. Some circumvention tools will vanish, and others will appear. For every sensitive term that gets blocked, people will find a different word to replace it.

The spread of the internet will continue to expand the space for expression in Chinajust not necessarily thanks to the American companies willing to do whatever it takes to gain a foothold there.

Emily Parker has covered China for The Wall Street Journal and has been an adviser in the US State Department. She is the author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are , a book about the power of social media in China, Cuba, and Russia.

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Apple Caved to China, Just Like Almost Every Other Tech Giant - WIRED

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If the American people actually believed that censorship was bad, they would throw away their iPhones, stop buying shampoo on Amazon, and quit going to the movies.

Why is it not a cause for concern that the world's wealthiest corporations are cooperating with the Chinese government, employing their considerable technological resources to prevent Chinese citizens from circumventing firewalls or accessing private networks designed to restrict access to information and opinions of which the authorities disapprove? Why do only nerd parodists on YouTube complain about the absurd lengths to which film producers go to appease Chinese censors doing everything from removing same-sex kissing scenes and other sequences considered vulgar or too violent to inserting brand-new characters to appease nationalist sentiment? Why is the pursuit of obscene levels of profit and record-breaking box office numbers a sufficient justification for these pathetic and, in cinematic terms, banal concessions?

The answer is simple: We don't really think censorship is wrong. Or rather, we vaguely think censorship is wrong except when it gets in the way of profits.

Anyone who went to high school in this country is familiar with what I think of as the standard textbook history of the United States. It is an impoverished, mostly uninteresting narrative that begins with some kind of bridge in Alaska and ends with the Cold War, a thing that we won. It has many gaps not much seems to happen between the War of 1812 and the Lincoln-Douglas debates or between the Civil War and the Depression. Huge lumbering abstractions abound: the Gilded Age, Tariff Reform.

One of the most dreadful of these looming specters is censorship, a bad thing that involved a senator named McCarthy who was somehow also a member of a committee in the House of Representatives. At some point or another, between the time when people said "I Like Ike" and Vietnam, censorship mostly went away. But before it did there was something evil called a blacklist that was maintained by Hollywood. People on the blacklist were good because they stood up for free speech in defiance of censorship. Being okay with the blacklist was so bad that if you appeared before the evil House committee that ran it from Washington it was a very good thing decades later for people to protest your receiving an award and for people in the audience to be rude to you and not applaud.

In other words, the fact that a handful of mediocre screenwriters did not get to make lots of money working in the movie business is obviously much more important and interesting than the intricacies of the very real decades-long struggle for world dominance between the United States and her liberal democratic allies and the Soviet Union.

I mention all this because this valorization of a few insignificant characters is one of the only salient facts that millions of Americans know about the conduct of the Cold War at its height. The badness of censorship is an unquestioned article of faith. The idea that obscenity should not be permitted on our screens is as ludicrous as, well, the idea that there is even such a thing as obscenity. Bold pro-freedom of expression warriors renew their commitments every year with annual cost-free exercises in moral preening like Banned Books Week. The notion that somewhere some parent might take issue with one of her children reading a book with sexual themes is a crisis, a kind of secular blasphemy that demands excommunication. There is no room for prudential judgement here: Thinking that some things might be bad is the only thing that it is not okay to think.

Meanwhile, tech CEOs explain away their acquiescence with blanket censorship in countries where they depend upon cheap labor in order to make world-historic profits. Hollywood pretends that absolute creative freedom is a quasi-sacred right except when it isn't and it's totally worth interfering with an artist's vision in order to placate censors with absurd fears like movies with ghosts in them and get more cash at the box office.

And we let them. Why? Because most Americans think censorship is bad as long as we don't need it to make money.

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Why are so many Americans okay with corporations bowing to Chinese censorship? - The Week Magazine

Washington Post

Apple playing China's censorship game should make tech companies really nervous Mashable Based on the events of the last few days, we now know that even the biggest tech company on the planet can't put a significant crack in that impenetrable wall of internet censorship that gives the Chinese government ultimate power over all things ... Apple, Amazon help China curb the use of anti-censorship toolsWashington Post Joining Apple, Amazon's China Cloud Service Bows to CensorsNew York Times How Apple and Amazon Are Aiding Chinese CensorsSlate Magazine (blog) Amnesty International -Engadget -Salon -Amnesty International all 244 news articles »

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Apple playing China's censorship game should make tech companies really nervous - Mashable

A still from the band Cairokee's music video "Al-Kayf." Uploaded on July 10, 2017. (photo byYouTube/CairokeeOfficial)

Author:David Awad Posted August 2, 2017

CAIRO Egyptian rock band Cairokee did not give up when the General Authority for Censorship of Works of Art on July 2 banned the sale of their new album A Drop of White. Why would they, when there is an alternative outlet in the form of YouTube? The YouTube launch of their 11-song album on July 11 was a resounding success. One song, Al-Kayf, ("Fix") has been viewed over 6 million times since its internet launch.

TranslatorPaul Raymond

"Al-Kayf" was the most popular song in Egypt in July, even after Egyptian pop superstar Amr Diab released Meaddy El Nas ("Passing People"), which has still failed to match the YouTube hits of "Al-Kayf" since the release of Diabs album July 20.

"Al-Kayf" was not the only successful song on the album. Wrong Way Blues has been watched over 4.5 million times, the title song A Drop of White 2.7 million times, while Cease-Fire and I Thought There Was Still Time each have received well over 1 million hits. So far, songs on the album have been viewed on YouTube over 24 million times.

But why did the censorship authority ban the album?

Cairokee broke news of the ban in a July 2 Facebook post, saying, The General Authority for Censorship of Works of Art rejected some of the songs on Cairokees forthcoming album 'A Drop of White.' The bad news is that for the first time, our album will not go on sale in shops and most likely will not be on radio or TV (not important). But the good news is that we are carrying on and our songs will be freely available on the internet and in digital stores, out on July 11.

The post did not specify why the authority had banned the album, a question that occupied the media even several weeks after the albums release and YouTube success. On July 26, Al-Tahrir newspaper published an interview with Cairokees lead singer, Amir Eid, in which he said, We dont know why the censor banned the album, the reasons are unclear. [But] the censor took issue with 'Cease-Fire,' 'Wrong Way Blues,' 'The Last Song' and 'Dinosaur' all of which had political overtones.

The words of the four songs are filled with passion. Cease-Fire refers to a Blind society that cant see its collapse and adds, Everybody participated in the crime and pressed the trigger, everybody chose silence and buried his head in the sand/ They are imprisoned between herds surrounded by dogs" in reference to the state's pursuit of opposition political activists after June 30, 2013. "Dinosaur," the most controversial song, says, "Moving between TV channels to kill the time and boredom, the same hypocrisy, stupidity and awfulness/ After they had sold our lands, they accused us of being the disloyal youth a reference to the maritime demarcation agreement between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, under which sovereignty over Tiran and Sanafir Islands will be transferred from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

Al-Monitor sought further clarification from Ahmad Medhat, the bands spokesman, who said, I believe the censor rejected those songs as it thought they were political, although they are not; they had no fundamental political motive.

Medhat said that the songs were not political but social in nature. "They express the feelings of the young people and their disappointment with how the January 25 Revolution and their revolution against the Muslim Brotherhood ended leading to the present situation, in which activists from the January 25 Revolution are being pursued and oppressed. This is what the youth talk about in the streets and cafes. Our songs had no political goal, their only purpose was to express the feelings of the youth, because we are the youth. The censor fears any honest expression, Medhat added.

Khaled Abdulgalil, the head of the General Authority for Censorship of Works of Art, has not responded to Al-Monitors repeated attempts to seek clarification on why the album was banned.

Mehdat said, The political overtones in the songs were not the only reason they were banned; the band has faced restrictions for years. Its songs have been banned by radio and TV, its concerts have been canceled for security reasons. Our friendship with certain activists, media figures and people who oppose the current regime, as well as our support for the January 25 Revolution, may have been reasons for these restrictions.

The band was launched in 2003 with five members: lead vocalist Amir Eid, lead guitarist Sherif Hawary, drummer Tamer Hashem, keyboarder Sherif Mostafa and bass guitarist Adam el-Alfy. But it was not until the January 25 Revolution that it shot to fame. A day before former President Hosni Mubarak resigned, the group played Sout al-Horeya ("Sound of Freedom"). After Mubaraks ouster, they recorded revolutionary songs such as Ya el-Medan ("O Square") with singer Aida el-Ayoubi. In the run-up to the 2012 presidential elections, they released Wanted: A Leader. When their friend, prominent activist Alaa Abdel Fattah, was arrested in November 2013, they released Yama fi Habas Mazalim ("In the Prison of the Oppressors").

The group performs a mixture of its own rock style and more conventional Egyptian pop. They recorded a song with pop groups Sharmoofers and El-Madfaagya, as well as performed A Stranger in a Strange Country with folk singer Abdelbasit Hammoudeh. After that songs success, they featured folk singer Tareq El Sheikh on Al-Kayf.

Banning songs is pointless in the era of YouTube, music critic Mohammad Shamees told Al-Monitor. I dont agree with the censor on these measures, because the controversy created by banning just makes them more popular. Cairokees songs have benefitted from political events in a way I dont agree with, because they have made political criticisms that were unjustifiably harsh, using any means to win an audience with the youth who are disgruntled about certain topics. The mixing of rock and pop means the songs have lost any unique nature, and the group repeats itself a lot. 'Wrong Way Blues' was the name of their 2014 album, which is a sort of artistic bankruptcy. Eids singing with Sheikh and Hammoudeh exposed the weakness of his own voice.

Cairokees experience with their new album confirms that there is no longer any room for banning and blocking songs, except from the ears of the state censors employees. Even the material losses the group may suffer due to the banning of album sales have been offset: Cairokees album was the most-sold record in Egypt on iTunes in mid-July.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/08/youth-band-beats-censorship-via-youtube.html

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Egyptian band beats censorship via YouTube - Al-Monitor

Last week, consumer tech giant Apple removed all major VPN apps from the Chinese branch of its Apps Store, seemingly putting yet another barrier in place for millions of Chinese citizens who might desire to defy their governments pervasive internet censorship system. On Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained why Apple chose to comply with the wishes of Chinese censors.

Its pretty simple, in Cooks telling. Unlicensed VPNs are against the law in China now, and Apple has to obey the law, period.

The central government in China back in 2015 started tightening the regulations associated with VPN apps, Cook told investors and media during Apples Q3 2017 earnings and conference call, per TechCrunchs Matthew Lynley. We have a number of those on our store. Essentially, as a requirement for someone to operate a VPN they have to have a license from the government there.

Earlier this year, they began a renewed effort to enforce that policy, he continued. We were required by the government to remove some of those VPN apps from the app store that dont meet these new regulations ... Today theres still hundreds of VPN apps on the app store, including hundreds by developers outside China. We would obviously rather not remove the apps, but like we do in other countries we follow the law wherever we do business.

Heres where Cooks reply gets a little more cynical.

We believe in engaging with governments even when we disagree, Cook continued. This particular case, were hopeful that over time the restrictions were seeing are loosened, because innovation really requires freedom to collaborate and communicate.

Cook compared the controversy to Apples 2016 battle with US authorities over iPhone security features, saying the situation last year was very different because US law was on the companys side. But he added if US law changed, Apple would have no choice but to comply.

In the case of China, the law is very clear there, Cook said. Like we would if the US changed the law here, we have to abide by them in both cases. That doesnt mean that we dont state our point of view in the appropriate way, we always do that.

Heres the thing: Apple isnt really engaging Chinese censors so much as complying with their orders, and theres no way removing the VPN apps will somehow result in that censorship being loosened. Its at best a tradeoff between maintaining market access on one hand, and collaborating with the current Chinese censorship system on the other.

Without getting into an argument on the merits of Chinese artist Ai Weiweis work, he hit something on the head in a New York Times editorial earlier this year: Whenever the state controls or blocks information, it not only reasserts its absolute power; it also elicits from the people whom it rules a voluntary submission to the system and an acknowledgment of its dominion. While Apples decision to remove the VPN apps may be mandated by the absolute power of the Chinese state, its also clearly reinforcing part two of the equation, voluntary submission to said power.

Cook, of course, is clearly aware of thiswhich is why he mentioned Apple would have no choice but to comply with a US censorship regime, too. Hes not exactly wrong. But its also a reminder of how any abuse of power requires enablers, and institutions whose bottom line rely on compliance are probably not going to save anyone from autocracy. With a few exceptions, theyll usually comply.

Elsewhere during the call, Cook noted, mainland China sales are doing just fine. The companys poor performance was mostly due to poor sales in the mostly autonomous region of Hong Kong, which has much less restrictive laws on censorship.

[Matthew Lynley]

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Tim Cook Says Apple Had to Comply With Chinese Censors, and They'd Do It in the US Too - Gizmodo

YouTube has announced a new system to catch and flag what it calls controversial religious and supremacist videos hosted on the platform. The platform plans to hide these videos from wider audiences, and demonetize them to prevent their creators from earning revenue from YouTube.

The move was met with widespread skepticism from YouTube content creators.

To crack down on offensive content, the company is using a combination of machine learning and volunteer experts to flag that needs review. It also plans to implement tougher standards for videos that are controversial but do not violate the sites terms of service.

YouTube says it isnt going to remove the borderline content entirely, but will instead place these videos in a purgatory state preventing them from being monetized or promoted. To facilitate these changes, YouTube will be artificially altering its search algorithms to prevent offensive topics from discovery.

Well soon be applying tougher treatment to videos that arent illegal but have been flagged by users as potential violations of our policies on hate speech and violent extremism. If we find that these videos dont violate our policies but contain controversial religious or supremacist content, they will be placed in a limited state. The videos will remain on YouTube behind an interstitial, wont be recommended, wont be monetized, and wont have key features including comments, suggested videos, and likes.

According to YouTube, the system, while largely automated, will mix in human reviews in the form of its already established Trusted Flagger volunteer program that works with over 15 institutions to deal with extremist content, including the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL recently released a list naming members of the alt-right and the alt-lite, the latter of which included controversial YouTube personalities like Gavin McInnes, Mike Cernovich, and Brittany Pettibone.

Its worth noting that the Trusted Flagger system was later transformed into the much maligned YouTube Heroes program, which invited the public to help moderate content. It was heavily criticized for giving social justice activists the power to manipulate the platform.

Despite the apparent focus on targeting extremism, YouTubes announcement includes the companys efforts to artificially promote videos through its Creators for Change program, which in YouTubes own words pushes creators who are using their voices to speak out against hate speech, xenophobia, and extremism.

High-profile feminists, including Franchesca Ramsey, are listed as ambassadors and fellows. Notably absent is Laci Green, whose strong 1.5 million subscriber count earns her top billing as the sites most popular feminist. Green has come under fire from social justice advocates for opening dialogue with anti-feminists.

If a video doesnt break YouTubes terms of services then they absolutely SHOULD NOT be attempting to dampen the reach of the video any further, said YouTuber Annand Bunty King Virk, who raised his concerns with The Daily Caller. Who determines whats passable and what isnt? At what point do we finally realize that saying the right thing isnt always about saying what people want to hear?

By these standards, if YouTube existed previous to the Emancipation Act, theyd be censoring videos criticizing slave owners, since being anti-slavery wasnt popular at all, he added. The popular opinion isnt always the right opinion.

Matt Jarbo, who goes by MundaneMatt on YouTube, shared his views with The Daily Caller on the move. They know its almost a non-issue completely, Jarbo said. But due to the controversies surrounding those videos, theyve gotten a much larger spotlight than they deserve.

I do not trust their ability [to automatically flag extremist content], he said. I think they have an algorithm in place to help combat those issues, but its not narrow enough to not impact the skeptical/anti-SJW content.

YouTuber Jeff Holiday told The Daily Caller that he doesnt worry about the policy affecting his revenue, as hes already diversified his income with other platforms, but worries that the crackdown will affect other creators.

The move to counter extremist content is of course a good one in theory, Holiday said. But the language used in their announcement does not fill me with confidence it will be restricted to legitimate extremism. I remain optimistic but wary.

YouTube has a clear bias given who they choose to promote for free on their site such as Francesca Ramsey who perpetually produces vastly disliked videos, he remarked.

That isnt to say there is a case for them censoring controversial content. Ive had a few videos marked advertiser unfriendly, but it hasnt been something perpetual. But hearing they might crack down further does concern me greatly. Again, not for the income, but for the potential disincentives it may cause future creators of controversial politics.

I do think there are valid concerns in Google possibly funding legitimate extremist enterprises, but the fact is that people like to abuse systems, especially automated ones, said YouTuber Chris Maldonado, whos also known as Chris Ray Gun. Its really only a matter of time before this backfires in some ridiculous way.

The curator of Undoomed, a channel that regularly makes light of social justice warriors, shared his concerns about YouTubes new direction.

No one can really say whos going to be impacted by this new road map, and thats the point isnt it? If their policies and terms of service arent there to help guide creators anymore, then why even have them? So really, anyone could be at risk without even knowing it, he said.

I have no problem with YouTube cracking down on terrorist recruitment videos and the likes, clarified Undoomed. What I dont understand is how such videos couldve possibly been considered acceptable under the extant TOS and policies.

I think there is a high probably for collateral damage with this new attitude, he said. Some people could conceivably consider skeptics and anti-SJWs extremists, while all we are doing is arguing for a little common sense, and of course for freedom of speech as demanded by the Constitution.

My suspicion is that trusted flaggers is just a code word for the usual suspects. i.e. the same type of radical left-wing reactionaries that have reshaped Twitter into an Orwellian nightmare, he concluded.

Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.

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Popular YouTubers React To Censorship Of 'Controversial' Content - The Daily Caller

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed lawsuits against the governors of Maryland and Kentucky, claiming they violatedconstituents' First Amendment rights by blocking individuals from official social media accounts.

The organizations Kentucky branch filed a lawsuit Monday on behalf of several constituents, while its Maryland branch filed suit on Tuesday. Both suits ask forinjunctions to stop Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) from blocking constituents on social media accounts.

"The highest purpose of the First Amendment is to protect the right of Americans to engage in political speech and to petition the government to address their concerns," Deborah Jeon, who serves as the ACLU of Marylands legal director, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Hogan's office dismissed the lawsuit as "frivolous" and "a waste of taxpayer dollars."

"The governors office has a very clear social media policy, and we will continue to remove all hateful and violent content and coordinated spam attacks to foster an open and constructive dialogue," said deputy communications director Amelia Chassin a statement.

"Ultimately, with all of the challenges we face in this country and across the globe, we can all agree that the ACLU should be focusing on more important issues than monitoring Facebook pages.

One of the Marylandplaintiffs said she was a Democrat who voted for Hogan and was blocked from his Facebook page after asking the governor to issue a statement on President Trumps travel ban.

My comment was deleted and I was blocked from the page. From the moment it happened, I couldn't believe Governor Hogan would block people who disagreed with him, but who weren't rude or threatening, Meredith Phillips said. Deleting any comment from constituents that doesn't praise or agree with Governor Hogan is a violation of free speech."

The lawsuits come several weeks after a First Amendment groupsuedTrump for blocking social media accounts that exhibit dissenting opinions.

William Sharp, the legal director for the ACLU of Kentucky, said in a statement that the First Amendment does not allow the government to exclude speakers from a public forum because it disagrees with their viewpoint.

And even when the government seeks to enforce permissible limits in such a forum, permanently excluding individuals for violating those limits goes too far, Sharp added.

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ACLU sues Maryland, Kentucky governors over social media censorship - The Hill

What do Winnie the Pooh, an image of an empty chair, and Justin Bieber have in common? They all have been recently banned by Chinese censors. BBCreportedthat China banned Winnie the Pooh from its social media sites because bloggers have been comparing him to Chinas President Xi Jinping.

Since the late NobelLaureateLiu Xiaobos death, Chinese WhatsApp userscomplainedthat Chinese censors blocked their attempts to send images of an empty chair to commemorate Liu inreal time. Last but not least, Chinese Bieber fans weretoldrecently by Beijings Culture Bureau that the Canadian pop star is banned from having concerts in China due to his past bad behaviors which caused public dissatisfaction. Thus banning him is necessary to purify Chinas domestic entertainment scene.

Id never imagined that Winnie the Pooh, an image of an empty chair, and Justin Bieber would all become symbols of liberty one day. For the last 30 years, while the daily lives of Chinese citizens have dramatically improved, their opportunities for free speech, assembly, and expression havent. Chinas wealth enables the Chinese government to control information flow, promote propaganda, and monitor and suppress dissent much more efficiently and effectively.

With Communist Partys leadership reshuffle getting close, Beijing has stepped up its censorship. Banning Winnie the Pooh and Justin Bieber are small potatoes compared to Chinas latestcrackdown on virtual private networks (VPNs), a popular method Chinese use to bypass Chinese authorities Great Firewall. The most intrusive tool the government deploys is facial recognition technology and iris scanners installed everywhere to keep a watchful eye on the entire Chinese population.

The Wall Street Journalestimatedthat China has 176 million surveillance cameras in public and private hands, and the nation will install about 450 million new ones by 2020. The U.S., by comparison, has about 50 million.Chinas vast, technology-driven surveillance system has made it easier for the state to arrest political dissidents. The all-seeing big brother George Orwell imagined in 1984 has become a reality in China.

During Maos Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the Chinese government not only controlled every aspect of each citizens lifewhat to eat, how much to eat, where to live, and what one was supposed to do for a livingbut it also demanded full control of every citizens mind through thought control. Today the Chinese government no longer decide how much people can eat, but the state has even better control over the Chinese peoples minds.

Not all censorship flows from top-down. Many Chinese citizens and businesses have taken cues from the government and censor themselves. Chinas popular video and Internet streaming sitescleanedthemselves up by voluntarily taking down all foreign films and TV shows, replacing them with government-sanctioned propaganda that glorifies the Communist Party in the name of social harmony and patriotism.

One livestream showed a young woman host who dressed in Red Army uniform and filmed herself buying Mao Zedong badges at a gift shop. Chinas information control is so successful that she was probably never told that someone in her family perished during the man-made famine or tortured by Maos Red Guards in similar uniforms only four decades ago. Even if she was told the truth, will it change her self-censored behavior?

The most worrisome part of this whole situation is that while some Chinese reject state thought control (and pay a dear price for their struggle), many not only accept the governments propaganda, but also vigorously defend it. Pew Researchshowsroughly three-quarters (77%) of the [Chinese] public believes that their way of life needs to be protected against foreign influence.

Why should we care whats going on inside China? Because the impact of Chinas censorship and thought-control can be easily felt outside China. Many Chinese overseas echo propaganda like people inside China do. The most famous Chinese Internet troll group, Little Pink, is largely made up of Chinese females both inside and outside China. Theyre notorious for bombardingthe overseas social media of anyone who expresses any negative views about China, even fellow Chinese.

In May this year, Chinese student Yang Shuping gave a commencementspeechat the University of Maryland. She praised the fresh air and freedom of speech in the United States and contrasted it to her experiences growing up in China: wearing a mask to fight air pollution and passively accepting government-authenticated truth. Many Chinese netizens, especially those from Little Pink, called her a traitor who was sucking up to westerners at the expense of belittling her motherland. Many demanded that she apologize, which she did.

Still, her home address was posted online and some Chinese threatened her should she return to China. Even the Chinese government stepped in,withthe spokesperson of Chinas foreign ministry stating all Chinese should behave responsibly in their public statements.The cyber bullying and harsh reaction from China actually proved Yangs point that China lacks freedom of speech and thought.

But its the oversea reaction from Chinese to this student that really shocked me. Some Chinese students did speak out to support her, but it seems their rational reaction was drowned out by criticism. The Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of Maryland quickly put out aproud of China video campaign. Throughmedia interviewsand social media postings, many Chinese students in the United States said Yang was unpatriotic and she embarrassed herself and her motherland by speaking ill of her country in front of a biased western crowd.

I recently experienced such a feverish defense of China in the United States first hand. At the Las Vegas Freedom Fest, one of the largest libertarian gatherings, one of my fellow panelists was a 30-something young man who emigrated from China to the United States when he was 12. Facing a libertarian-conservative audience, he confidently proclaimed that Chinese President Xi is a virtuous leader, Chinas current economic system is laissez faire capitalism, western-style democracy is not suitable for China because of Confucianism, Chinas one-child policy was humane, and people can freely express themselves in China without any repercussions.

It was almost as if he took the talking points from Chinas foreign ministry and just read them. I thought he was telling a joke, but he finished his speech with a straight face. Later during the Q&A, he demonstrated that he believed everything he said by defending his statements unequivocally, despite mountains of evidence provided by other panelists.

If we believe some people inside China defend the government because they dont have access to information due to censorship, or they are doing so out of fear, whats the excuse for oversea Chinese like this young man and those from the Little Pink, who have all the information at their fingertips yet willingly accept and defend lies? They are the latest proof that Cultural Revolution-style censorship and thought control never dies because so many Chinese are willing participants and enforcers. If people like this young man can live among us for so long but stay immune to western ideas of human freedom, what does this say about the strength of our education, culture, values, and ideas, compared to the power of Chinas censorship and propaganda?

The ripple effect of Chinas censorship obviously doesnt stop at Chinas border. We in the west need to not only keep an eye on whats going on inside China, but also be aware how that affects our lives here. Its time we realize that not everyone who comes here and lives among us naturally seeks truth and freedom. Orwell wrote in1984thatThe choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness, and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. If we want the bulk of mankind to choose freedom, we have a lot of work to do.

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China's Censorship Powers Are More Dangerous Than You Know - The Federalist

Apple has been accused of removing apps from its China App Store that can be used to skirt the country's Internet filters. Above, customers at an Apple Store in Beijing in 2016. Mark Schiefelbein/AP hide caption

Apple has been accused of removing apps from its China App Store that can be used to skirt the country's Internet filters. Above, customers at an Apple Store in Beijing in 2016.

Updated at 5:56 p.m. ET

There are iPhone apps that make it possible to get around China's notorious Internet filters. And on Saturday, makers of those apps said Apple had removed their products from its App Store in China.

It would be another sign of Apple's willingness to help Beijing control its citizens' access to the Internet.

The apps create virtual private networks connecting a user to the Internet via an encrypted connection. In China, VPNs can be used to skirt the government's extensive system of internet controls, sometimes called the "Great Firewall."

"We received notification from Apple today ... that the ExpressVPN iOS app was removed from the China App Store," app maker ExpressVPN said in a blog post. "Our preliminary research indicates that all major VPN apps for iOS have been removed."

"We're disappointed in this development, as it represents the most drastic measure the Chinese government has taken to block the use of VPNs to date, and we are troubled to see Apple aiding China's censorship efforts," the company added.

ExpressVPN, which says it is headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, posted a screenshot of the notice from Apple that its app "includes content that is illegal in China."

Another company, Star VPN, tweeted that its apps were also removed from the China App Store.

In an email to NPR, Apple said: "Earlier this year China's [Ministry of Industry and Information Technology] announced that all developers offering VPNs must obtain a license from the government. We have been required to remove some VPN apps in China that do not meet the new regulations. These apps remain available in all other markets where they do business."

The New York Times reports that Internet crackdowns in China tend to happen about every five years, timed to precede an upcoming congress of the Chinese Communist Party. The Times notes that China is Apple's largest market outside the U.S. In December, Apple pulled the Times app from its app store in China.

ExpressVPN says its apps for other operating systems remain accessible and that it's possible (though it's not easy) for Chinese users to create an account to access another country's App Store, if they list a billing address elsewhere. If they can do so, they can still download VPN apps for the iPhone.

The government's focus on cutting out VPNs is said to be taking other forms, as well.

"A southern China data-services company with over 160 clients said it received orders last week from the Ministry of Public Security, which runs China's police forces, to cut off access to foreign providers of VPNs," The Wall Street Journal reported. "Those orders came days after a luxury hotel in Beijing, the Waldorf Astoria, said in a letter to guests that it had stopped offering VPNs 'due to legal issues in China.' " The newspaper noted that it was unusual for Apple to remove several apps at once.

Apple announced earlier this month that it's building a new data center in Guizhou its first in China that will comply with new Chinese cloud storage regulations. It's part of a $1 billion investment in the southwestern province.

Bloomberg reports the tech company's market share has "fallen as consumers wait for an updated iPhone 8, which is likely to be released later this year, or switch to cheaper Android devices."

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Apple Accused Of Removing Apps Used To Evade Censorship From Its China Store - NPR

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) notified a number of software developers Saturday that their virtual private network iOS apps would no longer be accessible in censorship-heavy China.

Consumers use the VPNs to circumvent the governments Great Firewall filtering internet content and limiting access to overseas sites, which renders some of the app features illegal and non-compliant with App Store guidelines.

A spokesperson implied that the decision is punitive merely for VPN developers failing to secure a government license.

We have been required to remove some VPN apps in China that do not meet the new regulations, Carolyn Wu, Apples China spokeswoman, told Bloomberg.

The apps are still available in other global markets, and at least one developer noted its continued accessibility in China through non-iOS platforms. ExpressVPN confirmed that users with international billing addresses will still be allowed to access the app in China.

Still, it expressed concern with the latest restrictions.

Were disappointed in this development, as it represents the most drastic measure the Chinese government has taken to block the use of VPNs to date, and we are troubled to see Apple aiding Chinas censorship efforts, the firm wrote in a press release. ExpressVPN strongly condemns these measures, which threaten free speech and civil liberties.

Golden Frog and Star VPN responded similarly.

We view access to internet in China as a human rights issue, and I would expect Apple to value human rights over profits, Golden Frog President Sunday Yokubaitis told the New York Times.

While many took the occasion to debate Apples social responsibility, some discussed the firms Catch-22 business position. Nearly a quarter of global sales come from China.

One argument is that, for the sake of its continuation in the Chinese market, Apple needed to submit to government standards and comply with regulations.

Conversely, some point out that its decision effectively repels consumers, whose only incentive to buy Apple over Android was the formers capacity to bypass security.

Related Links:

Can Apples Mega Cycle Overcome Chinese Demand Issues?

What The Future Holds For Apple In China

________ Image Credit: By Simon Wade - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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2017 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Apple Bows To Chinese Regulators, Removes Internet Censorship-Defying Apps - Benzinga

FRANKFORT, Ky.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky filed a federal lawsuit Monday regarding Gov. Matt Bevin banning or blocking users from his official social media accounts.

The suit seeks a declaration that Bevin's practices are a violation of individuals' First Amendment rights. The ACLU asked for an injunction to prevent the governor from permanently blocking users on Facebook and Twitter.

The suit was filed on behalf of a retired social justice activist from Eastern Kentucky and a politically engaged resident from Louisville who were permanently blocked from posting on Gov. Bevin's official Facebook and Twitter accounts. Their comments involved politics but were not obscene, abusive or defamatory.

"Ive been very active in my community and in Frankfort for the past two years," ACLU client Mary Hargis said. "Ive been frustrated with Gov. Bevins stances on a number of social justice issues. I was shocked when I discovered that I was blocked from further commenting on the governors posts. I may not have voted for Gov. Bevin, but Im one of his constituents. He shouldnt be permanently dismissing my views and concerns with a click."

"I often use the official social media pages of my local, state and federal representatives as a way to share feedback," ACLU client Drew Morgan said. "I was surprised when Gov. Bevin blocked my access to his Twitter page, particularly because of how many times he has asked Kentuckians to follow his social media pages to hear about his ideas and policies directly from him."

The lawsuit states the governor's policy of permanently banning users from engaging in political discussions on his official social media pages isn't tailored to promote legitimate interest in moderating the pages and constitutes unlawful restraint of speech.

"The First Amendment does not allow the government to exclude speakers from a public forum because it disagrees with their viewpoint," ACLU of Kentucky Legal Director William Sharp said. "And even when the government seeks to enforce permissible limits in such a forum, permanently excluding individuals for violating those limits goes too far."

The lawsuit was filed after the governor's office ignored a demand letter from the ACLU regarding more than 600 users whose First Amendment rights had been violated after they were permanently blocked after posting comments on the governor's social media accounts.

The letter asked Bevin to unblock the affected users and develop written criteria for how his administration will moderate its social media pages in the future.

Originally posted here:

Lawsuit challenges Gov. Bevin's social media censorship - WLKY Louisville

The move came at roughly the same time that Apple said it took down a number of apps from its China app store that help users vault the Great Firewall. Those apps helped users connect to the rest of the internet world using technology called virtual private networks, or VPNs.

Taken together, the recent moves by Apple and Amazon show how Beijing is increasingly forcing Americas biggest tech companies to play by Chinese rules if they want to maintain access to the market. The push comes even as the number of foreign American tech companies able to operate and compete in China has dwindled.

Beijing has become increasingly emboldened in pushing Americas internet giants to follow its local internet laws, which forbid unregistered censorship-evasion software. Analysts say the government has been more aggressive in pressuring companies to make concessions following the passage of a new cybersecurity law, which went into effect June 1, and ahead of a sensitive Communist Party conclave set for late autumn.

The government has been intent on tightening controls domestically as well. It recently shut down a number of Chinese-run VPNs. New rules posted to government websites in recent days said Communist Party members can be punished for viewing illegal sites and that they must register all foreign or local social media accounts.

Also in response to the new law, Apple said it planned to open a new data center in China and store user data there.

Ms. Wang, who said that Sinnet handles Amazon Web Services operations across China, said that the company has sent letters warning users about such services in the past but that the government had been more focused on other issues.

Amazon Web Services allows companies small and large to lease computing power instead of running their websites or other online services through their own hardware and software. Because Amazons cloud services allow customers to lease servers in China, it could be used to give Chinese internet users access to various types of software that would help them get around the Great Firewall.

Keeping in line with censorship rules is only a part of it. In cloud computing, China requires foreign companies have a local partner and restricts them from owning a controlling stake in any cloud company. New proposed laws, which have drawn complaints of protectionism from American politicians, further restrict the companies from using their own brand and call for them to terminate and report any behavior that violates Chinas laws.

While Microsoft and Amazon both run cloud services in China, similar ones run by local Chinese internet rivals dwarf them in scale. In particular Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba runs its own cloud services, which have grown rapidly in China. In order to operate in the country, Chinas biggest internet companies must stay in close contact with the government and carry out Beijings various demands, whether they be a request for user data or to censor various topics.

While China is not a major market for Amazon, the company has been in the country for a long time and has been pushing its cloud computing services there. Also recently the company announced a partnership with the state-run telecom China Mobile to create a Kindle, the companys e-reader device, aimed at the local Chinese market.

Adam Wu in Beijing contributed reporting.

Originally posted here:

Joining Apple, Amazon's China Cloud Service Bows to Censors - New York Times

An Israeli border policeman shouts at journalists during clashes with between Israeli troops and Palestinian protesters near the Jewish settlement of Bet El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah October 30, 2015.. (photo credit:REUTERS)

During the past two weeks of unrest in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, police forces have restricted access to journalists attempting to cover the events.

On occasion they have used violence.

Sinan Abu Maizer, a cameraman with Reuters, suffered a concussion after being beaten by police with a baton near Lions Gate a week ago Thursday, according to a complaint addressed to Jerusalem District Police commander Yoram Halevy by the Association for Human Rights. The incident is captured on video.

In another incident, Faiz Abu Rmeleh, a freelance journalist and a member of the photojournalism group ActiveStills, was arrested Tuesday night while covering clashes at Lions Gate. A video seems to contradict police charges that Abu Rmeleh was aggressive. Following Abu Rmelehs arrest, the Union of Journalists in Israel published a statement calling on the police to provide clarifications and explanations.

Jerusalem Post chief photographer Marc Israel Sellems ID card was confiscated last Sunday, and police only returned it to him after he left the Old City. On Wednesday, police forced Sellem to erase photos, and an officer told him hes shit like all journalists.

Other journalists who have suffered from police brutality or who have been prevented from covering the events in Jerusalem include Ynet websites Hassan Shaalan, who was pushed to the ground near the Lions Gate; Haaretzs reporter Yotam Berger; and photographer Emil Salman, who were prevented access to the Lions Gate while tourists and others were allowed in; Sky News Arabias Nidal Kanaaneh, who was harassed while broadcasting; and Shireen Younes, who was attacked by police at the Al-Makassed hospital, adjacent to the Lions Gate.

While we sympathize with the pressures under which police have been forced to work after two of their colleagues were shot to death by terrorists on July 14, nothing justifies lashing out at journalists trying to do their job. A free press is the lifeblood of democracy. With relative quiet restored, Jerusalem police should now do some soul searching.

No coherent explanation has been given by the police for the way journalists have been treated.

First, it was claimed that the very presence of journalists near the Muslims who congregated to protest the use of metal detectors causes unrest and undermines the security situation. Then, on Thursday, Halevy said during a press conference that the restrictions were in place for the journalists own good to protect them from danger.

What seems more likely is that police officers view journalists, at best, as a nuisance and, at worst, as a fifth column who expose inconvenient facts about police behavior or generate slanted news items that present Israel in a bad light.

Police attacks on journalists cannot be seen in isolation from derogatory statements made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Likud against the news media. These statements are often calculated to appeal to public opinion on the Right, which tends to be critical of the press.

There is good reason to be critical of news outlets that intentionally present Israel in a negative light or fail to contextualize stories in an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish state. However, it is not the job of the police to ensure that news coverage of Israel is fair.

Attempts to use force to prevent individuals considered by police to be enemies of Israel ultimately backfire.

These incidents end up being documented and go viral on social media, erroneously presenting Israel as a police state that stifles free press.

In an age of Internet, every cellphone becomes a source of raw news. If police ban coverage by professionals like the Posts Sellem, they allow private individuals, often Palestinians taking part in the rioting, to control media coverage.

The only way to fight negative news media coverage is to ensure that a broad spectrum of news outlets is given access to what is going on, whether it be in Jerusalem or elsewhere. Allowing diverse perspectives to be articulated in a free and open atmosphere lies at the heart of democracy. The discerning intellects of the public not the police will decide for themselves which narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to accept.

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Police censorship: A free press is the lifeblood of Israeli democracy - The Jerusalem Post mobile website

Accordingly, the President has signed another law requiring that chat apps identify users through their phone numbers after January 1st, 2018. Some messaging clients already encourage you to attach an account to a phone number, but this makes it mandatory -- Facebook and others can't reject the idea if they're prefer to give you some kind of anonymity. The measure also demands that operators limit users' access if they're spreading illegal material.

The timing likely isn't coincidental. Russia is holding a presidential election in March, and banning technology like VPNs will make it harder for voters to see news that questions Putin's authority. Likewise, you may be less likely to organize a protest if you know that the police can trace anonymous chats back to you through your phone number. As with China's VPN crackdown, Russian officials are trying to control the online conversation at a crucial moment to make sure the powers that be go unchallenged.

Continued here:

Russian censorship law bans proxies and VPNs - Engadget - Engadget

When Chinese social media users on microblog Weibo came across an almost illegible post earlier this month, many of them would have instantly recognized it as Martian, a coded language based on Chinese characters that was very popular many years ago.

It was a version of a post by a prominent retired sociologist and sex adviser, Li Yinhe, in which she called for the elimination of censorship in China. The original post went viral on Weibo, which is similar to Twitter and has some 340 million monthly active users. More than 60,000 users (link in Chinese) shared the postunsurprisingly, it was soon deleted.

Chinese internet users and media observers have noticed tightening online restrictions in recent months, as stricter internet rules for online journalism and a new cybersecurity law came into effect in June. This month, in the wake of the death of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in custody, pictures vanished from private conversations on messaging platform WeChat, and similar blocks were noticed on WhatsApp, the last product from Facebook available in the country, and hotels announced they were reconfiguring internet access to comply with Chinese law.

To navigate around restrictions, Chinese internet users have often engaged in linguistic acrobatics, from code words, slang, and coded images, to dipping into other languages. Recently, some have turned to Martian (huo xing wen), a linguistic invention from the early days of the Chinese-language internet that had fallen out of favor and now is resurfacing.

Martian dates back to at least 2004 but its origins are mysterious. Its use appears to have begun among young people in Taiwan for online chatting, and then it spread to the mainland. The characters randomly combine, split, and rebuild traditional Chinese characters, Japanese characters, pinyin, and sometimes English and kaomoji, a mixture of symbols that conveys an emotion (e.g. O(_)O: Happy). For example, the word (y g), which means one of or one thing is transformed into in Martian language. It replaces with the number in a circle and adds a small square to the left of the traditional version of .

A Weibo user who goes by the alias Tangnadeshuo, and is a Martian-language user, says its a marker for Chinese people born after 1990: We use it to make fun and sneer. Its a cultural symbol of the post-1990s [generation], he said.

Its not an easy language to masterthe same Chinese character can have more than one Martian counterpart.

Even so, Martian language fever swept across the strait as players chatted in popular online games like Audition Online (link in Chinese) and then flooded onto Tencent QQ, a widely-used instant messaging app at the time. Soon creative Chinese developed new Martian language input methods for keyboards. The language has online translation tools.

It was very popular back in my school days People used Martian language in their ID and profile descriptions on QQ, Lotus Ruan, a research fellow at University of Torontos Citizen Lab, which conducts research on censorship, told Quartz.

Though its hard to read, young Chinese adopted the language not only because it was new and cool but also because it was incomprehensible to parents and teachers. Parents in paternalistic China seldom regard teenagers messages and diaries as their private materials. But they werent familiar with the transformation rules of Martian (and some even worried that using Martian might affect other language skills). Gossiping in Martian prevented many moms (link in Chinese) from understanding childrens messages in QQ and prevented teachers from reading notes passed to classmates.

Although Martian language is not as popular now as it was five to 10 years ago, people will still resort to it from time to time to circumvent the censors, Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, told Quartz.

Internet censorship works by filtering information for sensitive keywords. Research by Citizen Labs Jason Q. Ng shows that a Weibo post will first be reviewed by a machine and flagged if it contains certain keywords that are blacklisted. Human censors also review published posts. Using Martian can prolong the longevity of a post. If the Martian language [versions] of certain keywords are not on the blacklist already, it can be used to bypass censorship until a human reviewer censors it, she said.

It isnt only the Chinese whove resorted to using workarounds derived from Martian, such 7-1, 5-1 to refer to the June 4 Tiananmen Square protests (the math in the workaround refers to the date 6/4). In 2014 when the British Embassy in China published a 2013 human rights report, it posted (link in Chinese) the title in Martian: 2013 was written as 2013MZ. The new titl breaks down the word (rights) into its two parts , replaces with its synonym , and changes (democracy) into the initials of its pinyin MZ.

In the face of renewed efforts to ban the use of individual VPNs and crack down on online video streaming services, Chinese netizens have become increasingly concerned about their ability to communicate online. Earlier this month, a Weibo user posted in Martian language (link in Chinese and Martian language): From today on, I will post on Weibo in Martian language. Because if I post in Chinese I will be gagged. Guys you can have a try.

After the sexologist Li Yinhes anti-censorship July 9 post in Chinese was deleted in Chinait can still be read outside Chinait was reposted several times in Martian. Several of those posts got deleted too, most likely by a human censor, but one still survives.

Ruan notes that just because a Martian term gets blocked on one platform doesnt mean it wont be useful on another. Internet users should also note that censorship in China is not monolithic, she said. If a Martian-language keyword is censored on Weibo it does not necessarily mean that it is censored on other platforms such as WeChat.

Still, as Chinas sensitive-terms blacklist gets refined, Martian language may become less helpful. Also Chinese Martian users trying to evade censorship shouldnt ignore the possibility that, like them, people working in internet censorship groups might once have been Martian-speaking teens too.

Read more from the original source:

In China, internet censors are accidentally helping revive an invented Martian language - Quartz