Stand Up and Fight: A Week of Action Against Internet Censorship

EFF - When the government claims the right to shut down websites by breaking the Domain Name System and forcing search engines to dump user requests to reach a site, there’s only one word for it: censorship. And when big media groups like the RIAA can essentially cut off the financial services to a website based on accusation alone, it’s censorship at the hands of corporations.

We’re not talking about China or Iran. We’re talking about blacklist legislation being debated by the U.S. House of Representatives this week.

EFF and a coalition of organizations, tech companies, innovators, and users are joining forces to fight back against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that would give the government and big content unprecedented authority to censor the web in the name of so-called copyright enforcement. This week, we need to pull out all the stops because the House Judiciary Committee is slated to hold a critical hearing on Thursday.

SOPA’s supporters are desperate to rush this bill through quickly by convincing Congress there’s no real opposition to it. We know better, but we need to make our voices heard. That’s why we’re calling on you to join us in a dedicated week of action against the SOPA blacklist bill.                 More

British Prime Minister Does a 180 on Internet Censorship

EFF.Org - After several days of destructive riots throughout the UK, British Prime Minister David Cameron is practically tripping over himself in his eagerness to sacrifice liberty for security. In a speech before an emergency session of Parliament today, Cameron highlighted concern over rioters’ use of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter:

…when people are using social media for violence we need to stop them. So we are working with the Police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality. I have also asked the police if they need any other new powers.

Exactly what kind of government censorship of social media Cameron has in mind is unclear, but he went on to urge Twitter, Facebook, and Blackberry to remove messages that might incite further unrest across the country. British Home Secretary Theresa May is reportedly meeting with all three companies to discuss their “responsibilities” in light of the UK riots. Twitter has steadfastly refused to bow to government pressure to shut down the rioters’ accounts or delete their Tweets, referring to a blog post written by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and General Counsel Alex McGillivray earlier this year, near the start of the Arab Spring:         More

This Week in Internet Censorship: Arrests of Twitter Users and New Filtering

Pakistan

In Pakistan, where substantial online and offline censorship already exist, reports have emerged that users of the ISP Mobilink must add proxy 10.215.2.32 port 3128 to browse the Internet, resulting in censorship of key words and phrases in search engines, as well as several individual web pages, mostly related to Balochistan.

According to Shahzad Ahmad at the OpenNet Initiative, “Mobilink’s new filtering system will directly affect a large portion of Pakistan’s online community, which comprises 17 percent of the country’s population, or around 28 million people.”

Ahmad also notes that there is “no public knowledge of new legislation” that would have caused Mobilink to implement the new filtering.

Kuwait

Two Kuwaiti citizens, Nasser Abul and Lawrence Al-Rashidi, are to be tried for criticizing members of the royal families of neighboring states Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on Twitter. According to a Reuters report, both men will remain in detention until a hearing is scheduled and will likely face charges of harming Kuwait’s interests and defamation.     More