Category Archives: Surveillance

#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.

#IMWeekly: June 20, 2014

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Hong Kong
On the eve of a referendum about voting rights this week, Hong Kong’s digital voting platform was hit by a massive DDoS attack. Today is the first of three days of voting for Hong Kong citizens, who will decide whether to offer universal suffrage, seen as a move that would weaken the influence of Beijing-sponsored candidates. Now in its fourth day, the DDoS attack is being called “one of the largest and most persistent DDoS attacks in the history of the Internet” by the company CloudFlare, which has been contracted to defend the voting platform and said that the attack reached a scale of 300Gb per second today. The attack is widely suspected to be the work of pro-Beijing groups, who oppose the referendum. The vote is unofficial, meaning that its results will have “no legal effect,” according to a statement by the Hong Kong government. More than 200,000 ballots have already been cast. For more information, see our earlier post on the attacks.

Iraq
The spiraling violence as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) sweeps across Iraq prompted the Maliki government to cut Internet access in the country. Last Friday, sites including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube were blocked across the nation. Two days later, the government issued orders to ISPs to shut down all Internet access in five of the country’s 19 provinces. The Atlantic reported this week that ISIS is particularly effective at using “gaming Twitter” to push its message and recruit new followers. More information can be found in our blog post about the shutdown.

Pakistan
Twitter announced that it would no longer censor tweets deemed “blasphemous” by the government. In a statement, the company said that it had “re-examined the requests and, in the absence of additional clarifying information from Pakistani authorities, [had] determined that restoration of the previously withheld content is warranted.” Though hailed as a victory for freedom of expression in Pakistan, the decision drew attention to Twitter’s murky takedown policy, which it has declined to make public.

Tajikistan
Reporters Without Borders reported that YouTube has been blocked and Google is only partly accessible in Tajikistan since June 12. Blocking has surged in the country over the last two years, usually around times of political tension like last November’s presidential election. On Monday, a Global Voices contributor and the publication’s former Central Asia Editor, Tajik-born Alex Sodiqov, was detained while conducting academic research in the eastern part of the country. The government has allegedly shown him on national television “in an apparent attempt to discredit both him and an opposition politician.” More information can be found in our earlier blog post on Sodiqov’s detainment.

United Kingdom
Revelations emerged this week that the British government has been using a legal loophole to scrutinize its citizens’ social media communications. Charles Farr, director general of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism, revealed that posts and other communications made on platforms like Facebook and Twitter are considered “external communications” because they’re routed through foreign companies. This means that even missives traded by British nationals in the UK, who are usually afforded significant privacy protections, are fair game for government interception—without a warrant—because the data leaves British shores before reentering.

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

#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: December 16, 2013

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North Korea
The North Korean government began an effort to remove all Internet content and references on state-run sites related to Jang Song Thaek, the former top government and party official who was recently executed. Jang, who was the uncle of supreme leader Kim Jong Un, was one of the most powerful men in the country. Since his death, the state has effectively tried to erase him from the country’s official history.

United Kingdom
Amnesty International filed a legal claim against the UK government based on concerns that “the organization’s communications have been unlawfully accessed by the UK intelligence services.” Amnesty’s concerns first arose following the release of documents by Edward Snowden in June 2013 that revealed how UK authorities had access to information obtained by the US NSA’s previously secret PRISM program—the concerns were amplified when it was revealed the UK’s GCHQ had its own program, Tempora, that may have subjected people to blanket surveillance.  Amnesty’s claim is one in a series of recent legal challenges to spying that have emerged in the UK.

United States
Documents released by Edward Snowden revealed that American and British intelligence agencies have infiltrated globally popular online games, such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, in order to conduct surveillance and gather data on game users. The documents suggest that the spy agencies were concerned that terrorists might use the online games to communicate, exchange funds, and/or plot attacks.

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

#IMWeekly: December 9, 2013

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Brazil
A senior Brazilian lawmaker said that a vote on a law that would require global Internet companies, like Google and Facebook, to store the data of Brazilian citizens inside Brazil will be delayed until next year due to disagreements about the bill’s content.

China
Chinese telecom giant Huawei announced that it will no longer be pursuing business opportunities in the US. US officials and lawmakers have regularly accused Huawei of being a proxy for Chinese military and intelligence agencies and have encouraged public and private efforts to inhibit Huawei’s influence in the US.

Iran
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard arrested 16 cyber journalists and activists “accused of working against the country’s national security, having ties with foreign ‘enemy media’ and designing anti-regime websites.” The arrests followed on the heels of other recent government actions that have infringed on Internet freedom, despite promises by the administration of President Hassan Rouhani to peel back repressive government policies.

USA
Documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency is collecting vast amounts of cellphone location data to track the whereabouts and movements of hundreds of millions of cellphones around the world. The wide scope of the newly revealed programs has again raised concerns about privacy and is likely to provoke further resentment among foreign citizens and governments who have already expressed displeasure with US spying.

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