Internet: June 2006 Archives

By The Associated Press | The New York Times
30 June 2006

BEIJING (AP) -- China's Internet regulators are stepping up controls on blogs and search engines to block material it considers unlawful or immoral, the government said Friday.

''As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spreads through the blog and search engine, we will take effective measures to put the BBS, blog and search engine under control,'' said Cai Wu, director of the Information Office of China's Cabinet, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency.

The government will step up research on monitoring technology and issue ''admittance standards'' for blogs, the report said, without providing any details.

China encourages Internet use for business and education but tries to block access to obscene or subversive material. It has the world's second-biggest population of Internet users after the United States, with 111 million people online.

China launched a campaign in February to ''purify the environment'' of the Internet and mobile communications, Xinhua said.

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Agence France Presse
June 07, 2006

The Google.com search engine has been blocked in most parts of China, as Beijing steps up its efforts to restrict the public's access to information, a Paris-based media watchdog said.

Internet users in many major Chinese cities have had difficulty connecting to the uncensored international version of Google for the past week, Reporters Without Borders said in a statement received here Wednesday.

Aside from the Google.com search engine, Reporters Without Borders said the blocking was being gradually extended to the Google News and Google Mail services.

"Google has just definitively joined the club of western companies that comply with online censorship in China," Reporters Without Borders said.

"It is deplorable that Chinese Internet users are forced to wage a technological war against censorship in order to access banned content."

Random attempts to access Google.com in Beijing appeared to confirm that the international version of the search engine had indeed been made unavailable, while the censored Chinese-language version, Google.cn, was still accessible.

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Radio Free Asia - The Epoch Times
June 01, 2006

Critics say 'mutual supervision' will suppress opinions and have people informing on each other

[ Editor's note: This new measure is different from the already existing surveillance conducted by the Internet police ]

CHINA - On May 24, the Beijing Association of Online Media recruited 200 special Internet supervisors from across China to conduct comprehensive surveillance on the flow of information.

According to the Web site Qianlong.net, 200 people joined the first batch of special Internet supervisors for Beijing. From now on, all Web sites in Beijing will be under the surveillance of these Internet supervisors. If there is any so-called illegal content and undesirable information, the supervisor will rapidly transmit the relevant information to the Beijing Association of Online Media.

Current affairs analyst Zeng Ning from Guiyang City believes that employing Internet supervisors may be illegitimate. He said, "Such surveillance action, in my opinion, may infringe upon the legal rights of the person who posts the information. For example, the person's right to privacy or freedom of speech may be violated."

The Beijing Association of Online Media Web site indicates that the part-time responsibilities of the 200 Internet supervisors include conducting surveillance on uncivilized behavior, illegal and undesirable information in Beijing Web sites, and promptly informing the Beijing Association of Online Media through telephone, email and non-periodic participation in meetings.

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