Censoring the Internet

It turns out china is not the only government looking for ways to
censor or restrict internet use.

Yahoo appears to be the only company that has joined Google's call to fight internet censorship in China. While supports in China set up a makeshift shrine outside Google headquarters fearing that this could mean the end for the King of Search in China.

Google's Dispute with China has revived talk of a Global Online Freedom Act that would punish companies for sharing users info with "internet-restricting" companies.

Many people in China have found holes in the Great Fire Wall that allow them to gain access to restricted sites like Facebook and Youtube.

The Italy government is looking to introduce a law that would force people to obtain authorization form the communication ministry to post video on Youtube.

Google's Evils: Internet privacy and Censorship

Microsoft and Yahoo both plan to add new measures to their search engines that are support to make all search data anonymous and therefore almost useless after a certain number of months. Microsoft would erase identifying data after 18 months and Yahoo will make all search data anonymous after only 13 months.


These announcements come a month after Privacy International released a report that called Google "Hostile to privacy" for not protecting the privacy of user information.

Some people question if other search engines really do less Evil to user privacy then Google.

Despite all the personal information that Google has amassed:
Google has never leaked personal data or shared it with the government.

As a result of Microsoft;'s announcement Google said that it has also decided to make user data anonymous after 18 months.

Only Ask.com has created a service called AskEraser a search option that erases all history of Ask searches.

These announcements make me wonder; Can any of these measures really protect user information?

Can you really keep search data private?

especially after AOL released search search records of 650,000 of its users in August 2006 to the U.S. Department of Justice.

What if AOL told the the Department of Justice that they have enacted a measure to make users data anonymous and that they had no way of recovering this data? Does anyone think the federal government would ever by that excuse?

What will happen the next time (Yahoo 'helped jail China writer') China asks Yahoo for the privacy information on users that are speaking out against the government?

Do users really care if advertising companies and government agencies look at their search data?

While it may seem unnerving to some that the government can force search engines to hand over search data and personal information I think Americans have much bigger privacy concerns to deal with.

After all the press about the NSA's warrant less wiretapping program we still do not know a lot about who was targeted or what standards if any the NSA had to meet to get permission to tape someone's phone line.

The Bush administration has kept Congress from reading classified documents on the program by claiming executive privilege. So Congress recently dropped a subponea on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President Bush.

I think that the most evil thing that Google and other search engines are doing is going along with China's attempt to censor search results.

While I believe that people will eventually find a few to get the truth through cracks in the great firewall of China taking part in censorship with keep millions in the dark.

China still believes that they can maintain their power by keeping their citizens uneducated. The Internet has made it very easy for the common person to educated himself on any subject they choose.

Google has asked U.S. trade officials to treat Internet restrictions as international trade barriers like tariffs. China is not the only country that is afraid of the power that the Internet provides.

A study released last month by the OpenNet Initiative found that 25 of 41 countries surveyed engage in Internet censorship.

Apparently the Great Chinese firewall does not extend to Google Earth. Research Hans Kristensen posted the first photo of what is believed to be a Jin-class Submarine to the Strategic Security blog on the Federation of American Scientists web site.

Since Google Earth has been around for a couple of years now it is hard for me to believe that China did not see this coming.

Topix lets citizen post local news online

Topix is one of a growing number of new aggregators that has began to let citizens upload local stories giving readers the opportunity to search for stories of a small town written and produced by the people who live there.

Seizing on growing interest in Internet-based "citizen journalists" — stories and images posted by the public — news site Topix.com will introduce an area where anyone can post or edit reports, commentary and photos about local happenings.

Site visitors can find the items about their locality by entering a ZIP code or town name into the site's search engine.

The users' material will supplement Topix' current service that collects and posts news from 50,000 traditional newspapers and blogs.

If you look at the page for Chicago you will see that the page is also edited by citizen journalists from Chicago. While many of the stories are just short blog entries with links to local newspaper articles this site has created forms where people can edit, update and point out related news in new ways. Now every story can be reported on by a thousands of citizens on connected by the Internet. This is the evolution of the news story. From a dead article in a newspaper filed by the reporting of one person to a living story with several contributors that can be debated in a public forum for the world to see.

Topix laid out its plan of attack on April 1st. The center for Citizen Media has created a informed page on the principles of how to be good citizen journalists.

The University of Maryland has ten new projects in community community news such as :

New Castle News Forum. To create a weekly cyber newspaper built from citizen-generated content for the Chappaqua area in Westchester County, N.Y., which has lost its local newspaper. The project is spearheaded by local volunteers under the auspices of the Friends of the Chappaqua Library.







Who needs mapping software when you have My Maps. Google just create a new feature that lets you add place marks and lines to their maps.