Category Archives: Russia

#IMWeekly: June 27, 2014

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Australia
A potentially invasive surveillance bill due to be introduced to Australia’s parliament in July is inspiring resistance within the country. The bill aims to target potential jihadists and other terrorists who may be spreading violent rhetoric in their online networks. Prime Minister Tony Abbott claimed that jihadists who have been radicalized by their experiences with al-Qaeda and its offshoots may threaten national security, spreading their hateful rhetoric online. As such, this bill would give the Australian government power to store public metadata.

Egypt
In a climate of political uncertainty, the Egyptian government has sought to extend its hold over its citizenry by creating a media monitoring software that will understand multiple forms of written Arabic. The system, built to read both colloquial and Romanized Arabic, would allow the government to access the digital footprints of various citizens who may be harboring oppositional thoughts online. Human Rights Watch’ Cynthia Wong warns that such a move would restrict Egyptian’s netizens from expressing themselves fully and totally online, noting that the Internet has played a significant role in empowering independent voices of reform in Egypt.

Iraq
As the reality of stifled internet connectivity intensifies in Iraq, netizens are finding cunning ways around these blockages. FireChat, a smartphone app that doesn’t require an internet connection, has seen an unprecedented surge in downloads and consumption since June 14. Iraq, Bloomberg reports, ranks just behind the United States in terms of daily smartphone usage, making FireChat a widely-used form of communication in the country.  A Citizen Lab report released earlier this month also concluded that ISIS filters placed upon websites in Iraq have been largely ineffective, while the use of Psiphon and Tor has increased significantly in the wake of the internet shutdown.

Russia
This week, Russia’s Interior Ministry drafted a ten-year strategy to fight extremism – a strategy that could lead to online surveillance of netizens. Extremism is broadly defined under Russian federal law, ranging from hate crimes to armed revolution. The strategy aims to counter politically radical movements from the bottom up, targeting information sources and netizens spreading extremist rhetoric online. News of this plan emerges during a week when Colin Cromwell, Twitter’s head of global public policy, visited Russia and agreed to block “extremist accounts” under the demands of Russia’s Alexander Zharov, the chief of Russian federal communications agency Roskomnadzor.

Thailand
Since last month’s coup, Thailand’s junta has increasingly clamped down on pro-democracy movements online. For weeks, the “liking” of Facebook pages dedicated to anti-coup groups has been outlawed, while numerous pro-democracy websites have been blocked. IFEX reported that the junta is now deceiving netizens into unveiling their personal details through a deceptive Facebook phishing app, through which users are encouraged to “log in” with their personal information that is stored in their Facebook profiles. This faulty, fake app is in violation of Facebook’s own policies, and it was suspended twice by Facebook as a result. Access also reports that the junta has recently set up five media monitoring panels that intend to surveil social media for any dissenting opinions.

#imweekly is a weekly round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

New Internet Monitor report: “Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere: The Role of Blogs, Mainstream Media, and TV in Russia’s Media Ecology”

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Internet Monitor is delighted to announce the publication of “Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere: The Role of Blogs, Mainstream Media, and TV in Russia’s Media Ecology,” the third in a series of special reports that focus on key events and new developments in Internet controls and online activity.

“Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere,” authored by Bruce Etling, Hal Roberts, and Robert Faris, uses data collected from thousands of blogs, mainstream media, and TV sources to examine the role of Russian blogs within Russia’s media ecosystem:

Applying a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, we investigate whether Russian blogs represent an alternative public sphere distinct from web-based Russian government information sources and the mainstream media. Based on data collected over a one-year period (December 2010 through December 2011) from thousands of Russian political blogs and other media sources, we compare the cosine similarity of the text from blogs, mainstream media, major TV channels, and official government websites. We find that, when discussing a selected set of major political and news topics popular during the year, blogs are consistently the least similar to government sources compared to TV and the mainstream media. We also find that the text of mainstream media outlets in Russia (primarily traditional and web-native newspapers) are more similar to government sources than one would expect given the greater editorial and financial independence of those media outlets, at least compared to largely state-controlled national TV stations. We conclude that blogs provide an alternative public sphere: a space for civic discussion and organization that differs significantly from that provided by the mainstream media, TV, and government.

The full paper is available for download at SSRN: Blogs as an Alternative Public Sphere: The Role of Blogs, Mainstream Media, and TV in Russia’s Media Ecology

About Internet Monitor
Internet Monitor is a research project to evaluate, describe, and summarize the means, mechanisms, and extent of Internet content controls and Internet activity around the world. The project will compile and curate data from multiple sources, including primary data collected by the Berkman Center and our partners, as well as relevant secondary data. Internet Monitor will create a freely available online fact base that will give policy makers, digital activists, and user communities an authoritative, independent, and multi-faceted set of quantitative data on the state of the global Internet. The project will also produce annual reports that compile this information and provide expert analysis on the state of the global Internet. The Internet Monitor is a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It is funded by the US Department of State and the MacArthur Foundation.

#IMWeekly: January 31, 2014

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China & Iran
Iran’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology announced this month that it is in talks with China’s Information Council about best practices for implementing a closed internal “National Information Network.”

Egypt
A new anti-terrorism law in Egypt, which will come into effect next month, enables the government to censor websites that “instigate terrorism.” Critics of the law worry that this framing could be applied to popular social media sites, including Facebook.

Netherlands
After The Hague ruled that blocking access to peer-to-peer file sharing websites such as The Pirate Bay had no measurable effect on piracy, the government of the Netherlands has decided to unblock these sites.

Russia
Mashable reports that the Russian government has ramped up surveillance in anticipation of the 2014 Winter Olympics, which begin in Sochi next Friday. The country’s System for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM) allows the Federal Security Service to access servers directly, and according to independent reports from within Russia, the government recently has been experimenting with Deep Packet Inspection as well.

#IMWeekly: October 7, 2013

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Iran
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani chatted about Internet censorship with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey last week. The medium for their conversation? Twitter itself, which is blocked in Iran. Dorsey launched the conversation by asking Rouhani if Iranian citizens were able to read his tweets. Rouhani responded by claiming that he intends to “ensure my ppl’ll comfortably b able 2 access all info globally as is their #right,” potentially signaling a move toward greater Internet freedom in the country.

Russia
According to documents collected by Russian journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, Russia plans to monitor both the phone and Internet communications of Olympic competitors and spectators in February.

Vietnam
Dissident blogger Le Quoc Quan was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a $59,000 fine last Wednesday. Quan was arrested last December after criticizing the role of the Communist Party in Vietnam’s leadership; he was charged with tax evasion.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.

#imweekly: August 5, 2013

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Saudi Arabia
Raif Badawi, founder of the website Free Saudi Liberals, faces seven years in jail and 600 lashes for “‘setting up a website that undermines general security’ and ridiculing Islamic religious figures.” The website is a public discussion forum that authorities have blocked for years; the judge in this case ordered it shut down. The government arrested Badawi in June 2012 for cybercrime and failing to obey his father, and sentenced him more than one year later, in July 2013. Badawi initially faced charges of apostasy, which would have condemned him to death.

Russia
Russian blogger Anton Ilyushchenko discovered that a local nightclub had posted pictures on its website of seemingly intoxicated patrons “engaged in what appeared to be amateur striptease contests and public sex acts.” The Omsk resident posted them on his blog and criticized the nightclub. The post went viral and police began investigating him for distributing pornographic material, charges that carry a punishment of two to six years in prison. Some people said Ilyushchenko posted the pictures to generate traffic for his blog. Most who have spoken online about the case criticize the police for caring more about the image of the city and for failing to go after the nightclub where the photos originated.

Vietnam
Vietnam’s prime minister approved a decree that states blogs and social media sites can only contain personal information. “Personal electronic sites are only allowed to put news owned by that person, and are not allowed to ‘quote’, ‘gather’ or summarize information from press organizations or government websites” said Hoang Vinh Bao, director of the Broadcasting and Electronic Information Department at the Ministry of Information and Communications, to local media. The decree also forbids foreign Internet service providers from sharing “information that is against Vietnam.” Facebook users in Vietnam criticized the law, asking if sharing a link was now a punishable offense and lamenting that the government showed no signs of understanding the value of an open society. Digital rights organizations have criticized the decree’s vague language. The law is set to take effect on September 1, but it is unclear how the government will enforce the rule.

China
The Wikimedia Foundation is accelerating plans to enable native HTTPS for all its projects after leaked information indicated that the NSA’s XKeyscore program “specifically targeted” the site. The Chinese anti-censorship organization Greatfire took Wikipedia to task in June for dragging its feet on native HTTPS. China completely blocks HTTPS versions of Wikimedia’s projects, and Greatfire alleges that Wikipedia’s move could force the Chinese government to loosen its censorship of the site. In addition to Internet filtering and blocking, China is adding another tactic to its censorship arsenal: fact-checking. The nonprofit Beijing Internet Association is teaming up with the state-run Beijing Internet Information Office to launch a website that corrects falsehoods on the Internet. One visiting scholar at Columbia University said the site’s utility may be limited if people don’t trust the government. Amidst the government’s overarching censorship, one area will remain free. The University of Macau will become the first university on mainland China to obtain access to an uncensored Internet when it moves to its new facility on Guangdong’s Hengqin Island in January.

#imweekly is a regular round-up of news about Internet content controls and activity around the world. To subscribe via RSS, click here.