01 Apr 10 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
Google’s Security blog has revealed that a number of malicious malware attacks on Vietnamese computers have been specifically designed to spy on and target “blogs containing messages of political dissent”. Google described this example of internet hacktivism as a direct attempt to “squelch opposition” to a Chinese-backed bauxite mining project in Vietnam which has divided public opinion.
01 Apr 10 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
The Chinese government has reportedly invested £4bn to expanding the nation’s news networks and media channels. Newspapers such as the China Daily are to be remodelled to resemble British broadsheets, and China Central Television (CCTV), the country’s largest state television network, is to increase their service to include broadcasts in Russian and Arabic in addition to its English, French and Spanish transmissions. The move comes after President Hu Jintao’s remark on the “increasingly fierce struggle in the domain of news and opinion” in the global media circuit. Click here for an in-depth look at China’s conflicting approaches to international and national news.
31 Mar 10 | Index Index, minipost, Uncategorized
Yesterday Chinese users of the Google.cn search engine faced problems accessing results for normal terms such as “dog” or “home”. Although Google has redirected traffic to its uncensored servers in Hong Kong, internet users in mainland China still face the Great Firewall, which bans access to sites containing sensitive information. The glitch was caused by Google’s new coding which incorporated “gs_rfai” into certain search terms. The letters “RFA” was mistaken to be an acronym for Radio Free Asia, a site banned by the Great Firewall.
31 Mar 10 | Uncategorized
Journalists and activists working in China and Taiwan report that their Yahoo accounts have been disabled after hackers gained access last Wednesday. They believe information from their accounts may have been downloaded for further scrutiny. The New York Times, Andrew Jacobs also reported that a mail forwarding service was secretly activated on his account, this would have allowed the hackers to read future correspondence by forwarding his emails.
The cyberattacks mirror the hacking campaign which cause Google to announce it was pulling out of China and add to the pressure on Yahoo to take a stand on Chinese freedom of expression record.
In a response to Reuters, Yahoo spokesperson Dana Lengkeek did not comment on the nature of the attacks, but simply defended the company’s position to protect “user security and privacy”. On Twitter Kathleen MacLaughlin, another journalist targeted in the attack, said that she was “annoyed” with the “deafening silence from Yahoo”. The company had refused to disclose any information regarding the attacks on her account.
Unlike Google, Yahoo keeps its servers inside mainland China, this means the government has more jurisdiction and control over its operations. This feature was pivotal in the arrest of Chinese journalist Shi Tao in 2004, in which sensitive government documents about the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Protests was emailed from his private Yahoo account to an overseas human rights group. Upon the Chinese government’s request, Yahoo immediately turned over Shi Tao’s account information, his IP address, as well as the physical address of the computer which the email was sent from. Cases such as this, and Yahoo’s unquestioning complicity with China’s censoring of their search engine results have lead to several internet campaigns calling for web users to boycott Yahoo.
A Guardian report last Friday, included details of leaked Chinese documents outlined new state press guidelines regarding the treatment of future incidents relating to Google and the internet. Therefore, it is of no surprise to find that as of today, neither Xinhua or China Daily have covered this current Yahoo story on any of their English or Chinese-language websites.
