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Sri Lanka has imposed censorship on security-related mobile phone messages despite the withdrawal last year of tough emergency laws following the end of its separatist war with Tamil rebels.

The defence ministry's Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) in a directive to media organisations said they must get prior approval to publish SMS news alerts "related to national security and security forces".

The censorship, which was announced in a directive dated Friday but seen by AFP on Monday, appeared to be limited to SMS news alerts issued via mobile phones.

The directive came after reports of the killing Friday of three soldiers in the island's north raised fears that the Tamil Tiger rebels, crushed in May 2009, were regathering to resume attacks.

However, tensions eased after the army announced that the killings were carried out by a soldier who later turned the gun on himself and no rebel activity was suspected.

"Any news related to national security and security forces [and] the police should get prior approval from the MCNS before dissemination," MCNS director general Lakshman Hulugalle said in his directive.

Censorship The government imposed censorship during the height of fighting between troops and Tamil Tiger rebels using emergency laws that were relaxed last August following intense international pressure.

It was not immediately clear what legal provisions were being used to censor SMS alerts.

The censorship directive came into immediate effect and applied to over a dozen news services. Sri Lanka's five-player mobile industry has over 18-million subscribers.

Almost all major media outlets have their own SMS alerts to complement their mainstream radio, television and newspapers.

Read the original here:
Sri Lanka slaps censorship on cell phones

Sri Lanka has imposed censorship on security-related mobile phone messages despite the withdrawal last year of tough emergency laws following the end of its separatist war with Tamil rebels.

The defence ministry's Media Centre for National Security (MCNS) in a directive to media organisations said they must get prior approval to publish SMS news alerts "related to national security and security forces."

The censorship, which was announced in a directive dated Friday but seen by AFP on Monday, appeared to be limited to SMS news alerts issued via mobile phones.

The directive came after reports of the killing Friday of three soldiers in the island's north raised fears that the Tamil Tiger rebels, crushed in May 2009, were regathering to resume attacks.

However, tensions eased after the army announced that the killings were carried out by a soldier who later turned the gun on himself and no rebel activity was suspected.

"Any news related to national security and security forces (and) the police should get prior approval from the MCNS before dissemination," MCNS Director General Lakshman Hulugalle said in his directive.

The government imposed censorship during the height of fighting between troops and Tamil Tiger rebels using emergency laws that were relaxed last August following intense international pressure.

It was not immediately clear what legal provisions were being used to censor SMS alerts.

The censorship directive came into immediate effect and applied to over a dozen news services. Sri Lanka's five-player mobile industry has over 18 million subscribers.

Almost all major media outlets have their own SMS alerts to complement their mainstream radio, television and newspapers.

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Sri Lanka slaps censorship on text messages

Zafar Anjum | March 12, 2012

When the new media moguls start their business, they make big talk. But once they reach the tipping point, they show their true colours.

When the Malaysian authorities handed over a journalist to the Saudi government a couple of weeks ago (12 February), a hue and cry was made about the Malaysian government's scant regard for human rights.

Hamza Kashgari, 23, had fled Saudi Arabia amid a furore over his tweets on the Prophet Mohammad. Once returned, he is likely to face a charge of apostasy, which normally carries the death penalty.

On 8 February, we reported that after pulling the plug on more than a million online porn sites, Indonesia's Communications Minister, Tifatul Sembiring, has now set his sights on Twitter. Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology says it will target and block anonymous and offensive accounts on the popular social networking site.

Just a little before that (27 January), Twitter itself had admitted that it would censor tweets if a government would ask it to. Accordingly, Twitter has refined its technology so it can censor messages on a country-by-country basis. However, the good guys that they are, Twitter will post a censorship notice whenever a tweet is removed.

Ironically, just a year ago, Twitter had published on its blog a commitment to let Twitter flow (Tweets still must flow): "The open exchange of information can have a positive global impact ... almost every country in the world agrees that freedom of expression is a human right. Many countries also agree that freedom of expression carries with it responsibilities and has limits."

This is the same Twitter that had reportedly played a critical role in enabling the Arab Spring in the Middle East last year. Now, it wants to kowtow to powers that be. Why? Clearly, to protect its business interests.

Google, which exited the China market a few years ago, citing its adherence to values of freedom of speech, recently agreed to remove offensive content from its site at the behest of the Indian government. Worse still, the company that had started with the slogan of 'Do No Evil' is fast becoming the Big Brother with a finger in every pie. Facebook and other Internet companies have followed suit in India.

Are you surprised by these changes in the policies of some of the same Internet giants that made a lot of noise about freedom of speech when they started their business?

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BLOG: A season of censorship

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

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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.

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Graham council changes policy on public comments