Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Google Maps in Moonlight BBS Censored by CCTV

GlobalVoices: China: Be aware! Google Earth leaks national secret

  On May 6, famous blogger, William Long, was summoned by the Shenzhen Urban Planning and Land Supervision Division that a Google Earth picture indicating military facilities at www.moon-bbs.com is in suspect of leaking national secret. During the conversation, someone recorded the whole process with video.

  Ogle Earth: China cracks down on user-generated maps

  Having lived in China for just over a year, I've seen the progressive blocking of Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, YouTube and now most recently DropBox, so today should not have come as a surprise: User-generated maps and annotations are up next.

  danwei: Dodgy CCTV journalism and map clampdown

  The CCTV program 'Topics in Focus', ever happy to attack Internet companies, especially Google, participated in the purge by airing a program last night showing how a Chinese blogger was "revealing state secrets" by writing annotations on Google Earth.

  South China Morning Post: Censored: the map website accused of leaking site of PLA HK barracks

  "Everyone can freely mark information about buildings, even the houses of some top leaders and other so-called secrets, and share them at Google Earth; that's why they want to control such behaviour," he said.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Google Earth Layer Blocked in China

China appears to have blocked access to the popular internet maps service - Google Earth. Google Earth is a virtual globe program that displays satellite images of varying resolution of the Earth's surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and houses from a bird's eye view.

Google's map and satellite-photo service offered Chinese Internet users something they rarely could see: a bird's-eye view of the secret compound of Zhongnanhai(located west of the Forbidden City), where the country's top leaders live and work.

But in recent weeks, some layer of Google Earth(such as Google Earth Community) could not load and work in China. The Google Earth Community is an online forum which is dedicated to producing placemarks of interesting or educational perspectives. It may be found on the Google Earth webpage or under the Help section on the program itself. After downloading a placemark, it will automatically run Google Earth (if not opened), and fly to the area specified by the person who placed it. Once there, you can add it to your "My Places" by right clicking on the icon and selecting "Save to My Places". Additionally, anyone can post a placemark for others to download; as long as you have an account.

Google Earth

When I run a proxy program, and open Google Earth again, the Google Earth Community layer is right there, everything is ok.

Google Earth

Then I close the proxy program and click the layer again, it's tell me "Fetch of NetworkLink failed(http://mw1.google.com/): Connect Failed."

Google Earth

That mean the Weather,Gallery and Global Awareness layer is blocked in China. Google Earth Community is in the Gallery layer,  so it cannot be open again.

If the Chinese government is blocking its own citizens from seeing where their leaders live, whereas the rest of the world can see just fine, we're talking some major institutional paranoia.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

GoDaddy and SourceForge Blocked in China Again

GoDaddy, the world's largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar, and SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to blocked in Mainland China again after Beijing 2008 Olympic Games closed.

A screen copy of the command tracert shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.

Godaddy blocked in china


SourceForge blocked in china



Update: SourceForge unblocked on Nov 2 2008, GoDaddy unblocked on Nov 10 2008.

Friday, October 24, 2008

China Internet Censorship After Olympic Games

As Beijing 2008 Olympic Games closed, the Internet censorship in China further tightened. Undeniably, this deterioration has affected and frustrated an increasing number of netizens in China.

lot's of foreign websites have been blocked again after the Beijing Olympics drew to an end. Meanwhile, although other foreign websites remain approachable in China, some of their touchy contents are actually not accessible.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Want China Milk, Mr. Mandelson?

British politician Peter Mandelson, who was feted in China for drinking a glass of yoghurt on television in Beijing last week, has been rushed to hospital suffering from a kidney stone.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson drinks a Beijing-branded yogurt at a press conference in the Chinese capital on Friday September 26, 2008. Mandelson said he was confident of Chinese dairy products despite the recent tainted milk scandal. On October 6, Peter Mandelson is to have a kidney stone removed after attending the first meeting of Gordon Brown's economic war council.

Thousands of babies across China have suffered kidney stones after drinking formula milk mixed with the industrial plastic melamine.

Also, if you want to get an idea of how the Chinese government is handling the post-scandal media since the milk powder contamination was revealed, here are instructions reportedly from the propaganda bureau on how to report the incident:

Recently, the Sanlu mild powder contamination story attracted a lot of attention on the Internet. Now we are issuing some requirements for managing online news publishing:
1. Strictly standardize news sources, only use dispatches from Xinhua, People’s Daily and other central media outlets.
2. Do not make any headlines or features on this topic. Emphasize the government’s handling of the crisis and progress, and the care given to the babies by hospitals and other care providers.
3. Forums and blogs should not recommend this topic, not put it on the top of their pages, and the atmosphere and number of threads in the forums should be monitored and controlled.
4. Firmly block and delete information and posts that criticize the Party, the government, instigate petitioning and spread rumors.
5. Mobilize online commentators to guide the opinions. The general guidance should be based on information released by the Ministry of Health, and lead online users to support the Party and the government, convey the effectiveness of the efforts by concerned agencies.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Boycott China Product If You Really Love China

My blog entry today on a certain dairy poisoning case was deleted by request of a certain company… I feel that this very company's PR tactics are really, really neat. Isn't this supposed to be the case with best PR practises in China? That is — bind the interests of the company and the government, use the government to control your PR, and remove all posts that do not reflect well upon you. What kind of a "rhetoric advantage" this is! This way, they'll keep on drinking what you make, and suddenly vanish into graves — just like that, out of the blue.

The greatest problem in China is that we have too many people who have knowledge and independent thought, if all these people are dead, we don't have anymore problem.

There is hearsay there the enterprise spent 3 million yuans in Baidu search engine, it seems that we have underestimated its power, they only need to spend half the amount to push the government's PR machine.

Remember: if you really love China, never buy anything made in China.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

GoDaddy Unblocked in China

After a week hiatus, GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name host, is back online in China.

According to my early report, GoDaddy.com was blocked during the Olympics to prevent Chinese nationals from registering domain names after the names of Chinese athletes who won (Gold, Silver or Bronze) in the Olympics. The Chinese government has a policy of protecting famous names from being registered and allows only the owner the right to register it as his/her domain name.

Since GoDaddy has suspend lots of Chinese human rights sites without warning last year, Isaac Mao think GoDaddy "It deserved! No tears" -- The hidden rules in China will change all the time. Just like Godaddy's case, any cases can become your nightmare whether it's an event, a people's name, or a domain name. And the worst thing you can never recover is that you lost the support from users.  There's only one government one business can please today or tomorrow, but there are millions of users one can't be fooled.

Friday, August 22, 2008

GoDaddy Blocked in China

GoDaddy, the largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar in the world, appears to blocked in Mainland China by the evil Net Nanny before the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games came to a close. A screen copy of the command "tracert www.godaddy.com" shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.

The current blocking may be related to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. China's sport authority has banned the issuing of Internet domain names based on the country's Olympic gold medal-winning athletes to anyone but the medalists themselves,  according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). The General Administration of Sport (GAS) provided the CNNIC with a full list of China's Olympic team prior to the Games opening on Aug. 8, and had registered all available domain names for athletes in Chinese characters and in Pinyin. Those who had already registered before the GAS order could not keep the the domain names any more, they were forced to give it to the medalist "as a gift".



The person that already had domain name hold up to now abandons a domain name of player of Olympic Games of China. If they donot want to abandon the domain, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) will force to retrieve the domain. But if the domain name is register outside China, such as in GoDaddy.com, the CNNIC can not retrieve that domain.

Now the currently largest Internet domain registrar in the world is blocking in China, the most likely explanation is, CNNIC do not want any Chinese hold a domain name of country's Olympic gold medal-winning athletes by blocking GoDaddy registrar. When the people in China can not visit GoDaddy and register domain outside China, so CNNIC can protect the domain names more easy.

GoDaddy has come under heavy criticism for suspending Chinese human rights sites without warning on August 17, 2007.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Websites Unblocked in China

It seems that the Chinese Wikipedia is unblocked in China now. The unblocking of the Chinese Wikipedia in China has probably been extended to cover the whole of China. Chinese users have direct access Chinese Wikipedia from very different corners of the country.

Not only with Chinese Wikipedia, this unblocking also looks like this was part of a broader opening up - mainlanders now have access to a lot of sites. Here's a rather representative list of sites that are now available in China, which include newspaper, magazine and NGO web sites previously hard blocked.

Western media



Hong Kong media



Taiwan media



NGOs


Thursday, July 24, 2008

SourceForge Unblocked in China

After a month hiatus, SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, is again accessible from China on the eve of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Chinese authorities has never admitted to blocking access to SourceForge, the only way for people in China to reach the site was by using a proxy server based outside of the country. There has been also no official confirmation that the website has been unblocked, but China unblocked it anyway. The Chinese authorities had promised to give foreign journalists more freedom in the run-up to this summer's Olympic Games.

China censors internet content that it finds objectionable, usually political material and occasionally pornography. The SourceForge blocking may be related to the author of SourceForge's anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games. China programmers needs SourceForge, and SourceForge is a professional technology website without political material. Now, SourceForge has been unblocked in China, Chinese programmers should enjoy SourceForge while it's available because we may never know when it will disappear.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

SourceForge Blocked In China

SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to blocked in Mainland China on the eve of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. A screen copy of the command "tracert www.sourceforge.net" shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.

SourceForge Blocked In China

The current blocking may be related to the recent anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games, which began on 8 August in Beijing. Some days before, the author of a very popular free source code editor in SourceForge named Notepad++ start to boycott Beijing 2008, he said that the action is not against Chinese people, but against Chinese government's repression in 2008 Tibetan unrest. The boycotting is surely a politic issue, but refers to human rights problems in China.

Is that the reason of this blocking? Chinese authorities regularly blocks access to websites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects. That's what we have been. Blocked.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Youtube Unblocked in China

After a week hiatus, Youtube, a Google-owned video sharing network, is back online.

It seems that tonight(Mar 22) Chinese users could visit YouTube again since it was blocked on Mar 15. I can confirm China Telecom can access it. It was really terrible when YouTube was blocked a week ago. There is no official answer as to why Youtube was blocked for a week period by the Chinese internet regulators. Quite a lot of people considered that it was for the tibet riot on Mar 14.

It may be that Chinese authorities has brought the situation under control,  and Kuo Min Tang win the Taiwan Election too, so they unblocked youtube, but some of the special video in Youtube still can not access. The Chinese authorities constantly prevents access to sites that it finds content or ideas offensive. Chinese users should enjoy Youtube while it's available because we may never know when it will disappear.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

YouTube Blocked in China Again

Internet users in China were blocked from seeing YouTube.com on Mar 15 after dozens of videos about protests in Tibet appeared on the popular online video Web site.

This is not the first time that Chinese authorities blocks YouTube. In October 18, 2007, YouTube is also blocked temporarily, two week later YouTub became available again in China, but now YouTube blocked again.

YouTube Blocked in China Again



The current block is actually a bit more restrictive than the other block, since any mention of the string "www.youtube.com" in any URL seems to be blocked.For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=www.youtube.com (if you are out of China, you should use http://www.google.cn/search?q=www.youtube.com) will not go through, and will get you a "Connection reset" error.

YouTube Blocked in China Again



China has blocked access to YouTube in an apparent attempt to stop the spread of video footage related the rioting going on in several cities in Tibet. There were no protest scenes posted on China-based video Web sites such as 56.com, youku.com and tudou.com. The only protest scenes video is on CCTV's website. Chinese media and international media have shown footage of buildings burning and crowds damaging store-fronts.

China has at least 210 million Internet users, according to the government, and is expected to overtake the United States soon to have the biggest population of Web surfers.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Internet Censorship In Chinese Cyberspace

China's Internet filtering regime (the Great FireWall) is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world. The internet censorship in Chinese cyberspace is pervasive, sophisticated, andeffective. It comprises multiple levels of legal regulation and technical control.

The Great FireWall is unparalleled anywhere in the world and is an insult to the spirit of online freedom, the Chinese authorities use it blocking thousands of websites and censoring online news.

Because of Chinese government have deployed colossal human and financial resources to obstruct online free expression. Chinese news websites and blogs have been brought under the editorial control of the propaganda apparatus at both the national and local levels.

The use of the Internet keeps growing in China. The country now has more than 160 million Internet users and at least 1.3 million websites. But the Internet's promise of free expression and information has been nipped in the bud by the Chinese government's online censorship and surveillance system. The Govermment is afraid of reign, they want to control all of the society.

In my early report, the Chinese authorities blocks more than thousand of dedicated server in HeNan and GuangDong without any explanation, Also they use the Greate FireWall to blocks some great website like FeedBurner,Blogspot,Youtube and Flickr, prevent people to meet the unwanted material.

The Chinese authorities have a longstanding set of policies restricting the information to which citizens are exposed, and that which they may themselves publicly say. The Internet poses a new challenge to such censorship, both because of the sheer breadth of content typically available, and because sources of content are so often remote from Chinese jurisdiction, and thus much more difficult to penalize for breaching restrictions on permissible materials. There is some evidence that the government has attempted to prevent the spread of unwanted material by preventing the spread of the Internet itself, but a concomitant desire to capture the economic benefits of networked computing has led to a variety of strategies to split the difference.

For example, the government might encourage Internet access through cybercafes rather than in private spaces so that customers' surfing can be physically monitored by others in the cafe. As a technical matter, anecdotal reports have described a shifting set of barriers to surfing the web from Chinese points of access -- sites that are reported unavailable or domain names that are unknown to the system or that lead to unexpected destinations, individual pages that are blocked, and the use of search keywords that results in temporary limits to further searches.

The Great FireWall was bought from Cisco Inc. , the technologies that Cisco sold to China for backbone routing purposes have packet filtering capability, allowing the routers to filter bi-directionally at thepacket level and to implement up to 750,000 different filtering rules. These systems are designed to combat various Internet attacks, including Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and the spread of worms andviruses. These same techniques can beapplied to block political content. The particular technique described in Cisco Systems to be Key Supplier for Building China's Nation-Wide IP Backbone. Also, China regularly blocks access to Web sites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects.

Activists and human rights organizations have for years charged Cisco and other Westerncorporations with actively assisting China in developing censorship and surveillance systems. Companies such as Microsoft and Cisco respond to these charges by suggesting that they simplysell the technology to China; thus, they cannot and should not control how their customers use what theyhave bought.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Google Blogspot And Google Pages Unblocked In China

The free blog hosting services Google Blogspot and the free homepage hosting Google Pages are accessible in China today.

Some days before, Google BlogSpot is blocked again after the the 17th Party Congress finished in BeiJing , but after YouTube unblocked, the Google Blogspot and Google Pages both unblocked now, that surprise me, those blocking are extremely arbitrary.

Hope that is not temporary unblocked.

Update: Google Blogger(Blogspot) was blocked in China again a week ago.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

YouTube, Have a Merry Halloween

A Very Merry Halloween to all users of YouTube in China, Google's YouTube became available again in China today.

YouTube's blocking two weeks ago seemed to be related with the 17th Communist Party Congress, the blocking also coincided with Google's launch of two Chinese language YouTube sites,  one in Taiwan and one in Hong Kong.

Now YouTube is back in mainland China. The unblock of YouTube has proved that the blocking of China Great FireWall is extremely arbitrary, but why unblock youtube in this time? I think the reason is the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party had finished.

I tested the Global YouTube, Hong Kong YouTube, Taiwan YouTube, all became available, that's not bad, also I tested my YouTube account, I find my account in the Global YouTube also can be used in Hong Kong YouTube and Taiwan YouTube, that mean the different site of YouTube use an unified account.

Global YouTube Available


Global YouTube Available


HongKong YouTube Available


HongKong YouTube Available


TaiWan YouTube Available


TaiWan YouTube Available

Friday, October 26, 2007

How To Visit Google BlogSpot In China

Most efforts(using proxy or editing hosts file, for example) to bypass The Wall can work, . I'm going to write 2 methods dedicated for blogspot.

The easier way is to use pkblogs, who provides accesss to blogs "blocked in India, Pakistan, Iran or China". But I think pkblogs itself may be blocked soon.

The more technical way (by Dance In The Dark) is to assign "*.blogspot.com" to an alternative IP address which is not banned yet, by configuring proxy settings of Firefox with following steps:

  1. Create a new text file and write the following codes
    function FindProxyForURL(url,host){
    if(dnsDomainIs(host, ".blogspot.com")){
    return "PROXY 72.14.219.190:80";
    }
    }


  2. Save it as C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\local\proxy.pac

  3. In Firefox, open Tools(menu)->Options(menu)->Advanced(tab)->Network(tab)->Connect, Settings(button)->Automatically Proxy Configuration URL(box), enter:


    file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/local/proxy.pac


  4. Say OK to close all dialogs. Now you can try someone.blogspot.com


Problems:


  1. The IP we used here 72.14.219.190 may be banned in the future, you will need to google for new solutions at that time.

  2. IE is also known to support auto proxy configuration, but I can't get it work. (via)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Google BlogSpot Blocked Again In China

The most popular blog host BlogSpot is blocked again after the the 17th Party Congress finished in BeiJing.

In the south China, BlogSpot is not accessible all the while, but in the north China, BlogSpot was suddenly accessible on October 15 in BeiJing. The 17th Party Congress started on October 15. Some believe that the current unblocking may be related to the 17th Party Congress, temporarily allowing the major foreign journalists to access their favorite BlogSpot. So the BlogSpot was only unblock in north China, on October 15. After the Congress's finishing, the BlogSpot is blocked again.

An unblocking of the site last year led to the availability of a Shanghai-based foreign blogger known as Chinabounder, whose blog recounted the author's sexual exploits with Chinese women while working as an English teacher. The posts ultimately led to an unsuccessful hunt for the author and a temporary closing of the blog(via).

Friday, October 19, 2007

Baidu Hijacking Google, Yahoo, Microsoft In China

Numerous users find that if they trying to access Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft search engines from China are being redirected to Chinese-owned search engine Baidu yesterday.

Chinese DNS servers are under government control, some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but some suspect that Chinese government has unilaterally blocked there US search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.

Hijacking Google Blog Search


Hijacking Google Blog Search


Hijacking Yahoo Search


Hijacking Yahoo Search


Hijacking Microsoft Search


Hijacking Microsoft Live Search


Earlier this week, Beijing has been ramping up its filtering of political sites in an attempt to stifle political dissent leading up to the Communist Party Congress, a meeting in which leaders are selected to serve under the president for the next five years. The most popular online video website YouTube is also blocked in China yesterday.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

YouTube Blocked In China

The most popular online video website - YouTube, seem to be blocked in China. The Chinese users are unable to access YouTube now. YouTube which has been acquired by Google Inc since Oct, 2006, is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on the web.

The current blocking may be related to the Communist Party Congress, which began on 15 October in Beijing and ends on Sunday. Chinese authorities regularly blocks access to websites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects. YouTube could conceivably carry some information the Chinese authorities think it shouldn't. That's what we have been. Blocked. Great Fire Wall-ed. 

YouTube Blocked In China


Now YouTube is inaccessible for most everyone in China, the current block is actually a bit more restrictive than the other block, since any mention of the string "www.youtube.com" in any URL seems to be blocked.

For example: http://www.google.com/search?q=www.youtube.com (if you are out of China, you should use http://www.google.cn/search?q=www.youtube.com) will not go through, and will get you a "Connection reset" error.

Connection reset


That mean the YouTube are not viewable via normal proxy. Chinese user must use secured transmission (SSL , HTTPS) to visit YouTube, that is not suitable because of the slow and instable connection.

The Chinese authorities also block some great website like FeedBurner, Flickr, WordPress, BlogSpot and Wikipedia.