22 Mar 2010 | Uncategorized
Google has announced that it is to redirect all Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong service, in a move to circumvent the Beijing government’s attempt to control the Internet.
Peter Barron, Google’s Communications & Public Affairs Director for North and Central Europe, told Index on Censorship: “It was clear that if we stopped censorship on Google.cn we wouldn’t be operating within Chinese law — so we redirected to our Hong Kong servers which are not subject to Chinese censorship law.”
Writing on the official Google blog, David Drummond, Google’s Senior Vice-President for Corporate development and Chief Legal Officer commented:
Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced — it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.
15 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost
According to an internal source quoted in the Financial Times, Google is “99% certain” to close the Chinese version of its search engine after prolonged disagreements over censorship laws. Last week Google’s Chief Executive Eric Schmidt confirmed that “something will happen soon”. In response to Google’s threats to shutter Google.cn, Li Yizhong, Minister of Industry and Technology, told the National People’s Congress on Friday that Google must “bear the consequence” of its “irresponsible and unfriendly” actions.
8 Mar 2010 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
Investigators looking into web attacks on Google and dozens of other American companies last year have traced the intrusions to computers at Jiaotong University as well as Lanxiang Vocational School in Shandong Province, an institution with ties to the Chinese military, according to a report in the New York Times. Beijing has subsequently denied these claims as “groundless“, fighting back against reports that investigators are drawing closer to hackers in China. China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Qin Gang, told reporters: “Reports that these attacks came from Chinese schools are totally groundless and the accusation of Chinese government involvement is also irresponsible and driven by ulterior motives.”
However, US analysts now believe they have identified the Chinese author of the critical programming code used in the alleged state-sponsored hacking attacks, making it far harder for the Chinese government to deny involvement. A freelance security consultant in his 30s wrote the part of the program that used an unknown security hole in the Internet Explorer web browser to break into computers and insert the spyware, a researcher working for the US government told the Financial Times.
26 Feb 2010 | Uncategorized
The Italian court’s decision in the Google/Vividown case is as incomprehensible as it is disturbing. Unfortunately, as the full ruling will not be made available for some time, we can only guess at the specifics of the court’s decision.
The three Google executives, rather than the company itself, were held criminally responsible for breaches of Italy’s data protection laws. The convictions could have been based on Google’s role as the provider of a “hosting” service for videos or, secondly, with regard to the privacy of the individuals in the video.
Providers of hosting services may not, following an EU Directive of 2000, be held liable if they expeditiously remove material upon receipt of a notice that material is illegal. While there is some debate about when the item was actually taken offline, prosecutors argued Google “should have” known about the video and that the internet giant should never have allowed the video to be uploaded. It seems both legally and logically implausible to argue that internet service providers of any type should live in a legal limbo, carrying out surveillance of their users based on a court’s belief they “should have known”.
On the second issue, the privacy of the boy victimised in the video, it seems difficult to see how credible the prosecutions evidence could have been as the Italian data protection authority did not support this case. In either scenario it seems very unlikely that the court decision was legally sound but the decision is part of a wider and profoundly dangerous trend in Italy with regard to freedom of communication, privacy and expression.
- Italy already has internet filtering laws that are almost certainly in contravention of the European Convention on Human Rights.
- In January 2010, the Italian government proposed measures for prior checks of all content to be placed on video hosting site, blogs and news media.
- Media freedom in Italy continues to decline according to Freedom House, who registered a further deterioration in the country in its most recent report.
In such a context, the “chilling effect” of this judgement could be far-reaching. In an environment where the providers of online services have little or no legal certainty, the only realistic option would appear to be to err on the side of caution and censorship and many journalists and commentators seem to be taking the line of least resistance.
But in concert with the Italian government’s pre-existing plans to monitor all internet uploads this case could threaten user-generated content.
When legislation was proposed to outlaw anonymity online in order “to fight paedophiles” it was quickly revealed that document was secretly authored by Univideo, the Italian union for the movie industry. So was the Union’s concern really child abuse or was it copyright?
Unfortunately, the situation in Italy appears to be a sign of the future rather than an isolated case. The European Commission is in discussions with industry “stakeholders” about how to police the internet more efficiently for intellectual property infringements. The United States for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) proposes that internet providers put “measures” in place to prevent infringements in order to avoid secondary liability for transgressions of their clients and the European Commission is also soon due to publish proposals for internet blocking. But don’t worry, its just to protect children; nothing sinister!
Joe McNamee works as Advocacy Coordinatory for European Digital Rights in Brussels (EDRi). He works on issues related to privacy, cybercrime, intellectual property, freedom of information/communication and related topics.
