Mediaboss Marketing

A new study has revealed details of how China's internet censorship apparatus blocks and deletes content from the Weibo microblogging service. "The work showed that the social media censor was similar to the system overseeing Chinese web access," the BBC reported.

According toThe New Scientist, scientists from Carnegie Mellon University looked at 57 million short messages posted on Weibo, and then re-examined them three months later to see which ones had been deleted. Its results found that controversial messages "tended" to be deleted, with wide regional disparities: in wealthy eastern cities like Beijing and Shanghai, roughly one in ten messages were axed; in Tibet, half were deleted.

The study found that the service was adaptive, the BBC reported, "It also found that the censorship system could be quite nimble and react quickly when words or phrases start to assume a more political meaning. For instance, the word 'lianghui' became sensitive when it started to be used as a code word for a 'planned protest'." The same was true for a word that means "asking someone to resign" after a high speed train crashed last year.

Criticism of government - especially of Fang Binxing, the brains behind the "Great Firewall" - were mostly deleted, as were other innocent-sounding terms that took on submeanings to describe pro-democracy protests. But not all controversial terms were deleted, suggesting a high level of human involvement, according to a researcher.

At least one instance of censorship was apparently to help users. After the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan, a rumor circulated that said eating large quantities of iodized salt, instead of potassium iodide, would protect from radiation poisoning. Those messages were deleted.

Pdraig Reidy of the London-based pressure group Index On Censorship told New Scientist, "This suggests incredibly close, real-time, manned monitoring of discussions and searches. We know that the Chinese government has thousands of people working on web censorship. This study proves how serious a project that is for the regime."

The full results of the study will be published in the next issue of First Monday.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/120312/study-reveals-chinese-censorship-weibo

Read this article:
Study reveals Chinese censorship of Weibo

GRAHAM A policy to regulate how comments and suggestions from the public are presented to the city council was adopted Tuesday, but not without at least one resident warning the action bordered on censorship.

The resolution was initially suggested in January by councilman Chip Turner following an acrimonious election season in Graham, particularly in the mayors race, in which members of the public stood to speak on occasion to blast the council and mayor for what they called lack of leadership.

The 11-point proposal calls, in part, for anyone wishing to speak to sign up from 15 minutes before the meeting until the time for comments to be heard, usually at the end of the meeting agenda. Items addressed by the public should not be items already on the agenda or items scheduled for closed-door considerations.

Comments would be limited to four minutes per speaker. Presentations should remain civil in their language and presentation. Speakers must address the council, not a particular member, and discussions between speakers and members of the audience will not be allowed. It is recommended that if there are several people wishing to speak to the same subject, they choose one person to speak for them all.

Speakers would not be allowed to discuss the candidacy of any person seeking public office, including the speaker. This item brought complaint from Ron James, who ran for the council in the November election.

Youre on dangerous ground, he said. This is close to censorship. He added that if a councilman worries about his character being defamated cq, he shouldnt have run for council.

Mayor Jerry Peterman countered that the policy is not censorship, but a way to keep meetings running smoothly and more efficiently.

Its not censorship, he said, adding comments in the meeting were not like comments made in public on a street corner.

Why would you want to come to the council and discuss someones candidacy anyway? councilman Turner asked.

James maintained any restriction on speech is censorship and should be avoided.

Read the original post:
Graham council changes policy on public comments

This past weekend, the Supreme Peoples Court (SPC) presented its work report which, as usual, was chock full of statistics and vague policy guidance language. There were also a number of accompanying speeches by officials and the usual Op/Eds commenting on everything. Quite a few potential topics there, but I want to briefly mention the issue of public opinion and its role in the judicial system.

Charlie Custer wrote a quick post about censorship and transparency aspects today, which is a good way to start this off:

Yesterday, Chinas Supreme Court president Wang Shengjun gave the Courts work report to Chinas National Peoples Congress. In it, he said something that has captured the attention of Chinese net users:

[...We must] place emphasis on listening to the opinions of the grassroots masses and other strata of society, we must place more emphasis on supervising public opinions about the news, we must pay more attention to the mood on the internet, respond quickly to the concerns of society, and unceasingly strengthen and improve the work of the Court.

Its a short statement, to be sure, but in the eyes of a Hunan Supreme Court justice who spoke with theBeijing Times, it is suggesting that the Court will push for tighter controls on the internet but that it also may open up some information about high-profile cases in response to the demands of the net-using public.

As is usually the case, whenever the government here discusses public opinion, the ensuing conversation focuses on censorship and transparency (the supervising part), with a special emphasis on Internet-based platforms like Weibo and bulletin board systems. No great surprise here given past efforts to manage such channels and current regulatory initiatives, including the various real name systems. Moreover, the governments continued emphasis on such management is obvious you cant swing a dead cat without hitting an official making a speech about the pernicious effects of online rumor-mongering.

But I always like to bring up another issue that is almost always ignored in these discussions, and that is the matter of judicial independence. Keep in mind that the SPC report and related commentary was primarily about the judiciary, and not public security or regulation of the Internet. And when we talk about public opinion, there are (at least) two issues here: the ability of citizens to make and access public statements, and how that information is then digested and used. Using the above language, the issues are supervision of and listening to public opinion.

The first issue, involving management of public opinion, is the one that gets the most attention generally; as the topic has political significance, this is appropriate. But the second issue is much more important in terms of the judiciary itself. As Ive pondered many times before in earlier posts, what is the role of public opinion when it comes to the judicial system? Or to put it another way, should judges be influenced by public opinion, and if so, how much weight should this be given?

Keep in mind that the topic of judicial independence is a complex and important one. Discussions of judicial independence in China usually focus on political influence, not the effects of public opinion. Obviously the former has much more influence on judicial action than the latter. That doesnt mean, however, that public opinion does not sway judges and prosecutors there have been several high-profile criminal cases in the past few years that illustrate this point quite well.

So when the judicial establishment talks about listening to the grassroots masses, this could refer to a number of things. Primarily it means paying attention to sensitive issues like local corruption, land misappropriation, environmental degradation disputes that lead to social instability. This sounds all well and good, since we want the judicial system to take an active role in solving these problem. But what does it really mean that the judiciary should listen?

More:
Public Opinion and the Judiciary: Moving Beyond Censorship

Published Date: March 12, 2012

Tags: censorship, extremist, Internet, Pakistan, religion

HUMAN rights activists have attacked Pakistans move to censor the internet, saying it is playing into the hands of extremists.

This is a horrible prospect we protested against crackdowns on news channels during past dictatorships and this democratic government is no different, said Saeda Deep, founder of the Institute of Peace and Secular Studies which is presently running an online petition against the move.

Restricting access to information and social media discussions will favor the agendas of extremists. Hackers will find access as always; government should concentrate [on] providing the poor with the basic necessities of life, she said.

The outcry comes after the government announced it wanted internet companies to introduce a nationwide filtering system and restrict access to 50 million web addresses. The aim is to block adult and blasphemous content.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority says it has already blocked 13,000 porn sites, and thousands of websites with alleged blasphemous content deemed offensive to Islam, as well as hundreds of sites and blogs run by Baloch separatists.

Report from ucanews.com

Rate this article:

Share this article:

Read more:
Pakistan activists criticize internet censorship

BERKELEY, Calif.First Amendment advocates have accused Berkeley's police chief of intimidation and censorship after he sent an officer to a newspaper reporter's home in the middle of the night to insist on changes to a story.

Sgt. Mary Kusmiss knocked on Bay Area News Group reporter Doug Oakley's door around 12:45 a.m. Friday on Chief Michael Meehan's orders, the Oakland Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/AlRYtG).

Meehan apparently thought Oakley misreported what he said during a public meeting about the police department's response in the case of a local resident who was beaten to death last month.

But Jim Ewert, general counsel of the California Newspaper Publisher's Association, said if Meehan had a problem with the story, he should have called the newspaper the next day or written a letter to the editor.

"It's the most intimidating type of (censorship) possible because the person trying to exercise it carries a gun," he said.

Oakley said he was shaken by Kusmiss's visit to his Berkeley home. He and his wife thought that a relative may have died.

Meehan has since apologized, calling his actions "overzealous." He said he didn't think Oakley would be intimidated or upset since Kusmiss regularly deals with the media.

"I did not mean to upset (Oakley) or his family last night," Meehan told the Tribune. "It was late, (I was) tired too. I don't dispute that it could be perceived badly."

Oakley had covered a community meeting on Thursday about the beating death of 67-year-old Peter Cukor on Feb. 18. Cukor had called the department on its nonemergency line to report the suspect in his beating, Daniel Jordan DeWitt, about 15 minutes before his wife dialed 911 to report that DeWitt was attacking her husband. But police did not immediately respond to that first call.

Oakley wrote that Meehan apologized to the community at Thursday's meeting for the department's slow response. But Meehan said he apologized only for not informing the public sooner about why the response was slow.

Read more here:
Police chief sends officer to reporter's house