GFW BLOG（功夫网与翻墙）

Kentucky Settles Internet Censorship Suit, Agrees to Lift Ban on Blogs

2008-07-01T23:28:00.000-07:00

Kentucky Settles Internet Censorship Suit, Agrees to Lift Ban on Blogs

Public Citizen Client Was Blacklisted After Criticizing the Governor

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Commonwealth of Kentucky has settled a lawsuit with a political blogger whose critical comments of then-Gov. Ernie Fletcher resulted in the state “blacklisting” all blogs on state-owned computers.

Public Citizen’s client Mark Nickolas, author of the blog BluegrassReport.org, agreed Tuesday to dismiss the suit in the U.S. District Court in Frankfort, Ky. after Kentucky officials approved the settlement agreement. Louisville attorney Jennifer Moore also represented Nickolas.

Under the settlement, Kentucky officials agreed to no longer single out Web sites just because they are considered blogs. State officials reserve the right to block sites they consider inappropriate but agree to use a “viewpoint-neutral” standard that applies equally to all Web sites.

Public Citizen filed suit on behalf of Nickolas after the state started using a filtering program to censor all Web sites categorized as blogs. The state’s former top computer official stated in a court filing that the filtering policy was implemented because the governor’s office was unhappy with Nickolas’s blog, which was widely read by state employees and frequently criticized the governor.

Kentucky’s blog ban went into effect June 20, 2006, the same day Nickolas was quoted in The New York Times criticizing Fletcher, who was facing misdemeanor charges for claims that he had forced Democrats out of state civil service jobs in order to give them to political allies. Fletcher has since been defeated by current Gov. Steve Beshear.

“The state of Kentucky targeted Web sites it considered ‘unfriendly’ and, in doing so, violated the First Amendment rights of Mark Nickolas and other bloggers,” said Greg Beck, the Public Citizen attorney who handled the case. “We applaud the current administration for recognizing that the state cannot impose special restrictions on Web sites just because they are run by bloggers instead of big media companies.”

READ the case documents.

Broad-based U.S. push to tighten Internet monitoring

2008-01-29T01:43:00.000-08:00

作者：David Montero 来源：csmonitor.com

The White House has moved this month to beef up its capacity to tap phones and police the Internet. But those expanded powers are heating up a long-running debate on security versus privacy.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday:

"President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems.

The directive, whose content is classified, authorizes the intelligence agencies, in particular the National Security Agency, to monitor the computer networks of all federal agencies -- including ones they have not previously monitored.

Until now, the government's efforts to protect itself from cyber-attacks -- which run the gamut from hackers to organized crime to foreign governments trying to steal sensitive data -- have been piecemeal. Under the new initiative, a task force headed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will coordinate efforts to identify the source of cyber-attacks against government computer systems."

The new directive is part of a wider push by the US intelligence community to monitor the Internet, says Wired Magazine's blog "Threat Level," which follows security and privacy issues.

"The nation's top spy, Michael McConnell, thinks the threat of cyberarmageddon ... is so great that the U.S. government should have unfettered and warrantless access to U.S. citizens' Google search histories, private e-mails and file transfers, in order to spot the cyberterrorists in our midst.

…[I]n May 2007 McConnell convinced President Bush that a massive cyber-attack on a [single] U.S. bank would be worse for the economy than the deadly terrorist attacks of September 11, [a Jan. 21 article in The New Yorker] reports."

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that the administration has advanced its efforts to boost its wiretapping abilities.

"[The] White House plan to broaden the National Security Agency's wiretapping powers won a key procedural victory in the Senate on Thursday, as backers defeated a more restrictive plan by Senate Democrats that would have imposed more court oversight on government spying.

The vote moves the Bush administration a step closer toward the twin goals it has pursued for months: strengthening the N.S.A.'s ability to eavesdrop without court approval, while securing legal immunity for the phone companies that have helped the agency in its wiretapping operations."

Those efforts may violate, however, an earlier law governing wiretapping, The Washington Post reports.

"At the heart of the controversy is whether the government's wireless surveillance program violated provisions of the original FISA [Foreign Intelligence Security Act] law that requires warrants for wiretaps whenever one of the parties involved in the communication resides in the United States....

The original FISA law requires the government to get permission from a special court to listen in on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States. Changes in communications technology mean many purely foreign to foreign communications now pass through the United States and therefore require the government to get court orders to intercept them."

Both the wiretapping and Internet proposals have met stiff public resistance from privacy advocates and Democratic senators, and the debate is likely to balloon, reports The Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" blog.

"Congressional aides tell The Journal that they, too, are also anticipating a fight over civil liberties that will rival the battles over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."

Bruce Schneier writes in Wired Magazine's "Security Matters" blog.

"Security and privacy are not opposite ends of a seesaw; you don't have to accept less of one to get more of the other. Think of a door lock, a burglar alarm and a tall fence. Think of guns, anti-counterfeiting measures on currency and that dumb liquid ban at airports. Security affects privacy only when it's based on identity, and there are limitations to that sort of approach."

Mr. Schneier's blog links to a recent poll by Rasmussen Reports, an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information, indicating that Americans think security is more important than privacy.

"Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans say that Security is more important than privacy. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 29% disagree and say privacy is more important. Twenty percent (20%) are not sure."

Net Neutrality Groups Press FCC

2008-01-17T22:27:00.000-08:00

作者：Jason Lee Miller 来源：WebProNews

Call for swift and decisive action against Comcast

Free Press, the organization behind SaveTheInternet.com, responded to the Federal Communications Commission's expressed intent to investigate Comcast and Verizon Wireless over alleged content blocking. The group urged the FCC to respond quickly in order to protect the free flow of information on all networks.
Net Neutrality Groups Press FCC

Free Press was joined by Media Access Project, Public Knowledge and a swath of legal scholars in filing complaints with the FCC after Comcast was accused of interfering with BitTorrent traffic and Verizon Wireless blocked text messages sent by a pro-choice group.

Their complaints were joined by over 23,000 letters written to the FCC calling for an investigation. The FCC announced yesterday that the regulatory agency would look into it.

Free Press is hoping they do more than that, though. They want action.

"Free speech should be protected everywhere -- whether it's text messages, phone calls, e-mails or the Internet," said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press. "The FCC has started to respond to a growing public outcry, but they shouldn't drag their feet. Companies like Comcast and Verizon have showed repeatedly that they can't be trusted. Without quick and decisive action, they'll keep blocking, manipulating and interfering."

Comcast has denied blocking content, which may be a mere semantic argument. The company did say it was delaying some transmissions in order to optimize traffic flow across its network, a practice known as traffic-shaping.

This practice is one of the concerns among the Net Neutrality crowd since it amounts to companies, like in the situation with Comcast and BitTorrent, deciding what type of content and traffic gets priority. The fear is that ISPs have incentive to abuse their power.

"There's nothing reasonable about the way Comcast is secretly censoring what its customers can do on the Internet," said Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press. "Comcast is using Web filtering technologies similar to those used in China to censor the Internet. This egregious violation of Net Neutrality must be addressed by the FCC immediately."

Scott warns that a slap on the wrist or failure to act quickly will not send a strong enough message to ISPs about interfering with their customers' transmissions.

"The FCC must send a stern warning to any phone or cable company that would try to control our Internet experience," Scott said. "The longer the FCC waits to punish Comcast and Verizon, the more these companies will invest in technologies to censor and manipulate what we can do online and over the public airwaves. Censorship and blocking our access to the Internet should never be tolerated."