CyberLaw Blog

Archive for July 8th, 2009

Wife of Sir John Sawers, the future head of MI6, in Facebook security alertDiplomats and civil servants are to be warned about the danger of putting details of their family and career on social networking websites. The advice comes after the wife of Sir John Sawers, the next head of MI6, put family details on Facebook — which is accessible to millions of internet users.

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)

US -Suit over China’s Web filter to target Lenovo, Acer, Sony: “(IDG News Service)
A U.S. company will seek legal action against Lenovo, Acer and Sony next week over their shipment in China of controversial software that the company says stole its programming code. Solid Oak Software may also take action against other PC makers that have started shipping the software. The software, an Internet filtering tool that blocks pornographic and political content, copied files from Solid Oak’s own Internet content control product, according to the company. In recent weeks China ordered domestic and foreign PC makers to bundle the software, called Green Dam Youth Escort, with all computers sold in the country. It postponed the requirement just hours before the original deadline this week, but said it did so only because PC makers needed more time to ship the program.

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(Via QuickLinks Update.)

EU – Social networking giants are subject to EU data protection laws: “(OUT-LAW News)
Social networking sites are legally responsible for their users’ privacy, Europe’s privacy watchdogs have confirmed. The committee of data protection regulators has said that the sites are ‘data controllers’, with all the legal obligations that brings. Users of the sites are also data controllers with legal obligations when they are posting on behalf of a club, society or company, the opinion said. The committee of Europe’s data protection regulators, the Article 29 Working Party, has published its opinion on the legal status of social networking operators such as Facebook and MySpace. It has said that the sites cannot escape their legal obligations just because content on them is often produced and posted by users.See Opinion 5/2009 on online social networking. See also Article 29 Working Party on online social networking(EDRI-gram).

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(Via QuickLinks Update.)

CN / EU – Chinese censorship of Internet ‘unacceptable’: EU: “(AFP)
The EU accused China of ‘unacceptable’ Internet censorship, as Brussels rejected Beijing’s claim that an internet filter due to be introduced is instead aimed at blocking pornography. ‘The aim of this internet filter, contrary to what Chinese authorities contend, is clearly to censor internet and limit freedom of expression,’ the European Commission said in a statement. ‘We therefore urge China to postpone the implementation of this mandate and request that a meeting is organised at technical level to better understand what is at stake,’ it added. The matter will be raised at ‘information society’ talks hosted by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Beijing on July 9, the statement said.

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(Via QuickLinks Update.)

China not demolishing Green Dam: “

Censorware not going anywhere after all

China’s controversial mandatory censorware has only been delayed rather than abandoned, according to state media.…

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(Via The Register – Comms.)

BT abandons Phorm: “

Not looking good for ad tech

BT has abandoned plans to roll out Phorm’s controversial web monitoring and profiling system across its broadband network, claiming it needs to concentrate resources on network upgrades.…

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(Via The Register – Comms.)

China riots: Twitter and YouTube frustrate ‘censorship attempts’ – Telegraph: “China riots: Twitter and YouTube frustrate ‘censorship attempts’

Published: 1:18PM BST 06 Jul 2009

The communist authorities who built the so-called Great Firewall of China raced to stamp out video, images and words posted by internet users about the unrest in Xinjiang, which left at least 140 people dead.

Twitter and YouTube appeared to be blocked in China late on Monday afternoon, while leading Chinese search engines would not give results for ‘Urumqi’, the city in Xinjiang where the riots occurred.

Traditional press carried only the official version of events, which blamed the unrest on ethnic Muslim Uighurs.

However, similar to the phenomenon seen last month during Iran’s political turmoil, pictures, videos and updates from Urumqi poured onto social networking and image sharing websites such as Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

In many cases, items were reposted by other internet users on sites outside China to preserve the content, while Twitter helped link people around the globe to images Chinese authorities did not want seen.

A US academic in Urumqi broke news about the unrest via Twitter, saying hours before the mainstream news organisations on Sunday night that security forces were blocking off streets in the city.

State-run China Central Television (CCTV) showed its first images of the violence just before midday Monday – more than 12 hours after footage began circulating on the internet.

CCTV broadcast images of a woman apparently being kicked as she lay on the ground, protesters throwing stones at police, vehicles on fire, and two young girls with bloodied hands comforting each other.

However, its footage gave a different impression to some of the clips on YouTube that Uighur exile groups said backed their case the protesters were largely peaceful.

Footage posted on YouTube showed what appeared to be, at least initially, a peaceful protest, with men and women marching, chatting on mobile phones, sipping bottled water and raising their arms as they cheered.

Another video on the site apparently taken by low-grade video technology in Urumqi showed police in black helmets leading away handcuffed protesters.

Meanwhile some Chinese internet users were able to express frustration at having their postings on the violence deleted. In one case, Chinese blogger Wen Ni’er reposted an entry on a Google site.

“Chinese mainland websites repeatedly deleted my post, which seriously violated China’s law and violated my freedom and rights. I hereby want to express my strong disgust and condemnation,” she wrote.

She had help from other anonymous sites based outside of China that were aggregating and saving both official and non-official materials about the incident, such as drop.io/urumuqi.

“I saved them primarily because once the Chinese censors order a take-down, they might not be seen again. Indeed, since I saved them, many of these pictures were ‘harmonised’ and can no longer be accessed,” the site’s operator wrote.