State Dept. Human Rights Report Faults China's Curbs on Internet
201171
China is at the top of a list of countries blocking  Internet access, and  Russia and Venezuela have shown serious regression  in several  areas, mainly in centralizing power in the executive branch, according to State Department officials who released the department's annual human rights report...
297055
China&#39;s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called United States-based Human Rights Watch ``wicked&#39;&#39; for issuing a critical report on rights in Hong Kong ahead of Sunday&#39;s Legislative Council election.
90092
A State Department report that said Russia's human rights record has deteriorated in the past year was criticized by the government on Friday as skewed, confrontational and aimed at furthering American political interests.
580149
Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai said attempts to access Google&#160;and other search engines were successful Friday, despite claims on a U.S. blog that traffic to these&#160;sites was redirected&#160;to Chinese search engine Baidu.com.The claim first surfaced on TechCrunch, a U.S. blog that largely covers Internet startups before being picked up by other sites. The headline of that post alleged &quot;Baidu hijacking Google traffic In China,&quot; but offered no evidence to prove the claim apart from an undated, modified screenshot showing Baidu&#39;s Web page below the URL for Google Blogsearch.In a follow-up post, TechCrunch said &quot;new reports have surfaced that would indicate that China has unilaterally blocked all three major search engines in China and is redirecting all requests to Baidu.&quot; That report cited posts on other blogs, where users claimed to have been redirected from U.S. search sites to Baidu.A Google spokeswoman in Beijing did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.However, several Internet users -- four in Beijing and two in Shanghai -- reported on Friday morning that search engines operated by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, including Google Blogsearch, one of the sites reportedly most affected, were accessible. Attempts to reach these sites had not been redirected to Baidu, they said.Internet censorship is a serious problem in China, and regulators routinely&#160;block access to sites&#160;with content they don&#39;t like. But Chinese officials very rarely comment on censorship efforts, making it difficult for users to determine when a site has been blocked or is inaccessible for other reasons.Timing can be an important factor, with Chinese censors blocking access to some Web sites around politically sensitive dates, such as the June 4 anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the Chinese Communist Party Congress, a political confab held once every five years to choose top leaders and set policy that is now underway in Beijing.Access to a search engine can also be blocked if a user searches for a politically sensitive word, such as a search for information on the banned Falungong religious sect.Tracking the ebb and flow of censorship efforts can be a challenge, as access to sites can be blocked and opened, seemingly by whim. On Wednesday, Wikipedia remained blocked in China and access to YouTube was shut off. But censors eased off on other sites, opening up access to Google&#39;s Blogspot blogging service and permitting users to view pictures on Flickr, which had been blocked even though the site was accessible in China.Even when Web sites are accessible in China, there can be moments when sites cannot be reached. For example, one of the Chinese Internet users in Beijing contacted for this story said he was unable to reach Google.com three days ago. Attempts to reach the site were not redirected to Baidu, and Google has been accessible during the last couple of days, he said.While the Chinese government may not be redirecting search-engine traffic to Baidu, censors did this in 2002, just before the previous Party Congress opened in Beijing. At that time, censors cut off access to Google and redirected traffic to several local search engines, including Baidu. However, the rerouting did not affect all users and did not appear to be done at a national level, analysts said at that time.&#160;
18518
A US congress panel backs legislation which would stop internet firms from co-operating with Chinese authorities.
642532
By Stephen Foley  The American internet company Yahoo! has defended its record on human rights in China, and said it was asking the US government to challenge censorship in the communist country.
329712
China has suffered &quot;massive&quot; losses of  state secrets through the Internet, a senior official said, as  China faces reports that it has raided the computer networks of  Western powers.
231374
BEIJING, Dec. 25 -- Outraged that his Internet posting about dogs had been banned, Chen Yuhua wrote to the mayor of Beijing. No answer. He wrote to the city council. Still no answer. When all else failed, he consulted a lawyer, studied China's civil code and marched into court with a lawsuit.
193449
The Chinese governmentâs censorship of Web sites with no discernible political content has fostered a backlash.
317160
(InfoWorld) - A Chinese journalist jailed in part due to e-mail evidence provided by a Yahoo subsidiary plans to file a lawsuit in the U.S. against the Internet company within the next few months. "We're also trying to line up other victims for a class-action. We've been in touch with a few others, but we haven't signed anyone up yet. It's a very sensitive issue because there could be reprisals against their families," said Albert Ho, a legislator in Hong Kong and lawyer in the case, in a telephone interview. A Yahoo spokeswoman in Hong Kong could not be reached for comment. A U.S.Â civil suit against YahooÂ on behalf of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist convicted of "divulging state secrets" by Beijing in partÂ due to an e-mail Yahoo providedÂ to Chinese authorities, will likely be filed in either New York or California, Ho said. Tao's e-mail, sent from a Yahoo account in April, 2004 to a pro-China democracy Web site in New York, contained a Beijing order for officials to be on guard for unrest and dissident activity ahead of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Tao was sentenced to 10 years in prison. The new lawsuit would come just months after Ho filed a complaint to Hong Kong authorities against Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) on behalf of Tao. It also comes at a time whenÂ international pressure is increasingÂ on Internet companies to handle the private data of their users more carefully, particularly with respect to human rights. Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have both criticized Yahoo over the Tao incident, and a group of U.S. lawmakersÂ blasted a group of Internet companiesÂ earlier this year, including Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems, for failing to uphold free expression in China. "Internet companies should not disclose personal information that could violate the basic human rights of their users," Ho said. He said Tao, who is not a U.S. citizen, could file a lawsuit in the country under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789. The group has not yet decided on a U.S. law firm to retain for the case, nor would Ho divulge the specific strategy or damages the group intends to seek. The Hong Kong case remains pending because an investigation by authorities has not been finished yet, Ho said. Yahoo could face a fine, a civil lawsuit, or both if Hong Kong's Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data rules that it illegally divulged personal data used to put Tao in jail. The plaintiffs argue that Yahoo Hong Kong had no right to comply with a request from China for Tao's personal data, and requested that the office investigate the matter. Yahoo has denied any involvement in the case by its Hong Kong arm. The company has said any information provided to Chinese authorities in this case would have come from Yahoo's operations in China, rather than Hong Kong. However, Yahoo's Chinese and Hong Kong operations were both part of the same corporate entity, Yahoo Hong Kong, at that time In 2005, Alibaba.com acquired Yahoo's Chinese operations as part of a deal that saw Yahoo take a stake in the Chinese Internet company.
437999
Google Inc. (GOOG)'s recently launched news service in China doesn't display results from Web sites blocked by that country's authorities, raising prickly questions for an online search engine that has famously promised to "do no evil."    Dynamic Internet Technology Inc., a research firm striving to defeat online censorship, conducted tests that found Google omits results from the government-banned sites if search requests are made through computers connecting to the Internet in China...
652394
China shut down 44,000 Web sites and arrested 868 people for Internet pornography last year, state media said Wednesday.
520358
China shouldn't punish people for expressing their political views online, says the company that provided the information to the Chinese so they could nail a dissident.
293548
Yang Zhou is no cyberdissident, but recent curbs on his Web surfing habits by China's censors have him fomenting discontent about China's "Great Firewall".
375307
China will allow only state-run Web sites to broadcast video or radio through the Internet, tightening the governmentâs regulatory grip over the media content offered there.
119126
Chinese state media on Sunday blasted a Pentagon report on Beijing's defence plans as distorted and insulting, and said the gap between wealthy countries' military might and China's is growing, not shrinking.
761406
China has suffered "massive" losses of state and military secrets through the Internet, a senior official said, urging sweeping controls and new security agencies to fight computer threats and uncensored news.