[Infowarrior] - Reporters Without Borders report on China Internet Censorship

[Richard Forno]

A ³Journey to the Heart of Internet censorship² on eve of party congress

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=23924

In partnership with Reporters Without Borders and Chinese Human Rights
Defenders, a Chinese Internet expert working in IT industry has produced an
exclusive study on the key mechanism of the Chinese official system of
online censorship, surveillance and propaganda. The author prefers to remain
anonymous.

On the eve of the 17th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP), which opens this week in Beijing, Reporters Without Borders and the
Chinese Human Rights Defenders call on the government to allow the Chinese
to exercise their rights to freedom of press, expression and information.

³This system of censorship is unparalleled anywhere in the world and is an
insult to the spirit of online freedom,² the two organisations said. ³With
less than a year to go before the Beijing Olympics, there is an urgent need
for the government to stop blocking thousands of websites, censoring online
news and imprisoning Internet activists.²

This report shows how the CCP and the 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
Internet¹s promise of free expression and information has been nipped in the
bud by the Chinese government¹s online censorship and surveillance system.

³Journey to the Heart of Internet Censorship² explains how this control
system functions and identifies its leading actors such the Internet
Propaganda Administrative Bureau (an offshoot of the Information Office of
the State Council, the executive office of the government), the Bureau of
Information and Public Opinion (an offshoot of the party¹s Publicity
Department, the former Propaganda Department) and the Internet Bureau
(another Publicity Department offshoot).

The report also documents how the Beijing Internet Information
Administrative Bureau has in practice asserted its daily editorial control
over the leading news websites based in the nation¹s Capital. It gives many
examples of the actual instructions issued by officials in charge of this
bureau.

The last part of the report gives the results of a series of tests conducted
with the mechanism of control through filtering keywords. These tests
clearly show that, though there are still many disparities in the levels of
censorship, the authorities have successfully coerced the online media into
submission to censor themselves heavily on sensitive subjects.

This report recommends using proxy servers, exploiting the different levels
of censorship between provinces or between levels in the administration and
using new Internet technologies (blogs, discussion forums, Internet
telephony etc.)

Download the full report  http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=23924