Fwd: Libya Shuts Off Internet Again: This Week in Online Tyranny
I thought this compendium of government abuses of the Internet might interest people as we head into the SF ICANN meeting, where governments will continue to assert their right to make wholesale changes to ICANN consensus policy and demand a case-by-case review of new gTLDs. Antony P.S. This just covers what happened *this week* Begin forwarded message:
Date: March 10, 2011 2:02:00 PM PST Subject: Libya Shuts Off Internet Again: This Week in Online Tyranny Source: ReadWriteWeb Author: Curt Hopkins
Libya shuts down the Internet again. Libya shut down the Internet for a brief period in mid-February. Then again on March 3, it shut it down completely and it has remained off.
This has not had what we can presume is the desired end of this action, the end of the revolt. Nor has it kept information from getting out of the country. As we've mentioned elsewhere, a lot of the information we get is distributed by Libyan expatriates who are in contact with protesters inside the country.
Saudi Facebook protester disappeared. Faisal Ahmed Abdul-Ahadwas, believed by some of his fellow protesters to be one of the administrators of a Facebook group calling for a "Day of Rage" on March 11, has disappeared and is believed to have been murdered by Saudi security. The Facebook page has 17,000 members.
The killing, if it was a killing, is a concrete example of how serious the kingdom is in saying it won't "tolerate" protests.
Zimbabwe arrests 45 for viewing Egypt protest footage and makes its first "Facebook arrest." 45 Zimbabweans were arrested for attending a meeting called "Revolt in Egypt and Tunisia: What lessons can be learnt by Zimbabwe and Africa?" where they watched DVDs of Egypt news coverage.
Zimbabwean Vikas Mavhudzi left a comment on the Facebook account of opposition politician Morgan Tsvangirai saying that the protesters in Egypt had a "unity of purpose worth emulating" and was arrested for "subverting a constitutional government."
China's internal security budget - including online censorship - passes military. Partially in response to the uprisings in the Middle East, China has blocked many words associated with those uprisings and begun to arrest protesters and possible protesters. Most dramatically, it has also increased its internal security budget by almost 14%. They are now spending more money on keeping the reins on their people than defending the nation from outside threats.
Syrian blogger dies. Karim Arbaji, who was imprisoned for publishing a poem the regime did not like, was freed from prison a year ago. Several days ago he died of a heart attack. It's hard to imagine his time in prison did not negatively effect his health.
Facebook closes account of well-known Chinese critic. Michael Anti, a highly regarded Chinese blogger, had his Facebook account shut down allegedly because he used an alias. In the meantime, the company's CEO has started a page for his dog. I'll repeated that. Facebook shut down an account of an important thinker in contemporary China because "Michael Anti" isn't a real person, and they made one for a dog.
Read more…
No attribution Antony? On that last item that's a longstanding policy at fb, accounts are for (real name) people, pages are for everything else. A new development (I am told) is that once can switch identity between person and page when posting. j On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 8:17 PM, Antony Van Couvering <avc@avc.vc> wrote:
I thought this compendium of government abuses of the Internet might interest people as we head into the SF ICANN meeting, where governments will continue to assert their right to make wholesale changes to ICANN consensus policy and demand a case-by-case review of new gTLDs.
Antony
P.S. This just covers what happened *this week*
Begin forwarded message:
Date: March 10, 2011 2:02:00 PM PST Subject: Libya Shuts Off Internet Again: This Week in Online Tyranny Source: ReadWriteWeb Author: Curt Hopkins
Libya shuts down the Internet again. Libya shut down the Internet for a brief period in mid-February. Then again on March 3, it shut it down completely and it has remained off.
This has not had what we can presume is the desired end of this action, the end of the revolt. Nor has it kept information from getting out of the country. As we've mentioned elsewhere, a lot of the information we get is distributed by Libyan expatriates who are in contact with protesters inside the country.
Saudi Facebook protester disappeared. Faisal Ahmed Abdul-Ahadwas, believed by some of his fellow protesters to be one of the administrators of a Facebook group calling for a "Day of Rage" on March 11, has disappeared and is believed to have been murdered by Saudi security. The Facebook page has 17,000 members.
The killing, if it was a killing, is a concrete example of how serious the kingdom is in saying it won't "tolerate" protests.
Zimbabwe arrests 45 for viewing Egypt protest footage and makes its first "Facebook arrest." 45 Zimbabweans were arrested for attending a meeting called "Revolt in Egypt and Tunisia: What lessons can be learnt by Zimbabwe and Africa?" where they watched DVDs of Egypt news coverage.
Zimbabwean Vikas Mavhudzi left a comment on the Facebook account of opposition politician Morgan Tsvangirai saying that the protesters in Egypt had a "unity of purpose worth emulating" and was arrested for "subverting a constitutional government."
China's internal security budget - including online censorship - passes military. Partially in response to the uprisings in the Middle East, China has blocked many words associated with those uprisings and begun to arrest protesters and possible protesters. Most dramatically, it has also increased its internal security budget by almost 14%. They are now spending more money on keeping the reins on their people than defending the nation from outside threats.
Syrian blogger dies. Karim Arbaji, who was imprisoned for publishing a poem the regime did not like, was freed from prison a year ago. Several days ago he died of a heart attack. It's hard to imagine his time in prison did not negatively effect his health.
Facebook closes account of well-known Chinese critic. Michael Anti, a highly regarded Chinese blogger, had his Facebook account shut down allegedly because he used an alias. In the meantime, the company's CEO has started a page for his dog. I'll repeated that. Facebook shut down an account of an important thinker in contemporary China because "Michael Anti" isn't a real person, and they made one for a dog.
Read more…
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All, Rob Beckstrom's note of January 31st identified a rather limited set of issues in which ICANN's CEO took note, namely the expiry of a zone some 140 days in the future. The ALAC statement following also identified a rather limited set of issues in which the ALAC were willing to find an ICANN interest. I share neither of those views, and wrote both sets of actors at the time, to no observable persuasive effect, and continue to think the correct course of action is to document the mechanisms employed, and encourage those who tolerate rate limiting, incoherence, and ultimately partition to reconsider their respective roles in the institution presently entrusted with the technical coordination of unique identifiers. The GAC model does lack a means for some application for "tibet" to arrive at an outcome other than non-delegated due to the opposition by a nation state. However, it [some role for government advice and consent] has managed to produce a delegated solution for Palestine, and for Catalan or Catalonia. The Board model has not produced delegations since 2004, which affects a larger class of applications. Eric
participants (3)
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Antony Van Couvering -
Eric Brunner-Williams -
Joly MacFie