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With a population of 1.435 Billion (as of November 2019), China is looked upon as apotential new superpower; a rapid economic growth, strong military, and increased international influence are among the main reasons for such future predictions. Although, there is something which might cause a hindrance to the progressing global footprints.

Strict Censorship Over Online Activity The Great Firewall of China

China as a country has deep-rooted ancient cultural beliefs and ways of living. Undoubtedly, China is one of the worlds most technologically advanced nations, but it still resists modern, so-called western influences. And censoring the internet content and its access is one way to do it.

The Peoples Republic of China enforced a combination of legislative actions and technologies called The Great Firewall of China (GFW), to regulate the Internet throughout the country. Fang Binxing, known as the Father of Chinas Great Firewall has made a substantial contribution by providing a base infrastructure for Internet censorship in China.

In this respect, National Peoples Congress (NPC) passed CL97, a law that criminalizes cybercrimes and is enforced under following broad categories

The Great Firewall is justified under the category crimes carried out over computer networks. Under the pretext, the Chinese government can block any ISP, gateway connections, any access to applications on the internet, distribution of information which is considered harmful to national security, public order, social stability, and Chinese morality.

The major aim is to block the access to selected foreign websites which, according to the Chinese government, may prove detrimental to the countrys sovereignty. More than 50,000 people are designated by the government for the purpose to enforce censorship, block websites that the state disapproves of, and compel search engines to filter content that deems harmful.

There is a plausibleexplanation behind the Internet censorship in China:

Simply put, GFW of China is limiting access to most of the websites and internet services, which are revolutionizing the world. To name a few, Gmail, Dropbox, Google Apps (Drive, Docs, Calendar, Maps, etc.), Microsoft OneDrive, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify and more popular names that can cross your mind.

Certain internet censoring events in the past have led tons of questions in the wandering minds. The character Winnie-the Pooh was blocked on Chinese social media sites after a meme showing photographs of Xi modified as Poohbear was put up. The government modified the search results to suppress the criticism when in February 2018 Xi, to allow himself to become the ruler for life, appeared to set in motion a process to scrap term limits. The censors banned internet users from using phrases such as Disagree, Shameless, Lifelong.

It is admissible that the content over the Internet can sometimes be overwhelming, bias and ambiguous. But at the same time, it helps in broadening the perspective over millions of important topics around the world. Since China has opened its gates for international collaborations and the global market, the people who are turning in the country would need to have access to the uncensored internet. This is when methods tobypass China Firewallhold more importance than ever.

The Great Firewall blocks destination IP addresses and domain names. It also inspects the data being sent or received. For such type of censorship, the use of proxy nodes and data encryption is the circumvention strategy that is followed.

The Chinese government posts more than millions of pro-state content every year, with the help of social media influencers. The media companies are made responsible for all content they broadcast, including user-generated content. The world respects their ideology and intent to preserve their cultural values.

However, the world seems a better place when one comes out of his shell. With no offense to the rules, the VPNs and other methods of bypassing the China firewall help in understanding what the outside world is up to. Furthermore, the future generation of China could use tools likeGoogle Scholar, which would provide a gateway to share work between professors and students from all over the world. This encourages innovation and idea exchange, in and out of China.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to ourTwitterorFacebook.

Just another guy who likes to write about tech and gadgets.

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Bypassing the China firewall needs & ways to do it - KnowTechie

Tuesday, March 31st 2020 - 09:20 UTC Speaking to Rede TV, Bolsonaro criticized self-isolation and other measures imposed by local authorities to limit the spread of the virus

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said on Monday that there can be no more quarantine measures imposed on the country than those already in place to combat coronavirus because jobs are being destroyed and the poor are suffering disproportionately.

Speaking to Rede TV, Bolsonaro criticized self-isolation and other measures imposed by local authorities to limit the spread of the virus, a view that again appeared to put him at odds with Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mendetta.

Mendetta on Monday urged Brazilians to maintain maximum social distancing to ease the strain on the fragile health system and said that 200 million personal protective equipment (PPEs) items would be arriving from China next month.

You can't impose any more quarantine than there already is, Bolsonaro said, adding that the question people ask him most is when can they return to work.

Brazil's Senate passed a bill on Monday evening guaranteeing some of the country's poorest citizens income of 600 reais (US$117) a month for three months, a package that could cost almost 50 billion reais.

According to Bolsonaro, all measures to combat the crisis could cost 800 billion reais, and the economy, which is expected to contract this year, could rebound and be back on track within a year.

Earlier on Monday, Bolsonaro had stepped up his stand-off with state governments, branding governors in the hardest-hit states job-killers and suggesting that democracy could be at risk if the coronavirus crisis leads to social chaos.

When the situation is heading toward chaos, with mass unemployment and hunger, it's fertile ground for some to exploit, seeking a way to reach power and never leave it, Bolsonaro told reporters outside the presidential palace.

Bolsonaro last week warned that Brazil could break with democratic normalcy, citing the risk of rioting and suggesting the left could capitalize on any chaos, without elaborating.

The right-wing populist, elected in 2018 on a pledge to break with a corrupt political establishment, has long defended Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship as necessary to keep communists out of power.

The coronavirus outbreak, which has now resulted in 4,579 confirmed cases and 159 deaths in Brazil, has led governments around the world to call for emergency powers, raising concerns among human rights advocates.

So far Brazil's political leaders have been eager to negotiate emergency measures such as a war budget exempt from fiscal rules, but many have criticized the president, who lacks a solid alliance in Congress, for downplaying health risks.

Facebook on Monday followed Twitter and removed a video of Bolsonaro speaking to street vendors, explaining that it violated their standards on misinformation.

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Bolsonaro insists with his campaign to get the economy moving; Facebook censors the Brazilian president - MercoPress

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During the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been many economic and political measures. One of the most unfortunate ones is censorship of the Internet.

NetBlocks, a civil society group working at the intersection of digital rights, cyber-security and internet governance, reported on strange Internet outages in Wuhan during certain nights when the COVID-19 epidemic was starting to gather steam. The Farsi version ofWikipedia was blocked for about 24 hours in Iran.

VPN company Surfshark reported that its VPN infrastructure in Iran was seeing a dropoff of 50% in connection rate after the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 13th. Their cybersecurity advisor Naomi Hedges claims that since 13 March - when [COVID-19] was labeled as a pandemic - Surfshark's connection rates inIranhave dropped by 50%. Meanwhile, our website traffic fromIranhas decreased fivefold of its usual rate. Before the announcement, we haven't experienced notable fluctuations inIran's connectivity rates, so the numbers indicate the increased attempts to censor the internet.

It comes amid reports that China too is clamping on access to the Internet outside the Great Firewall, with VPN providers and connections under strain. Chinese social media networks such as WeChat have also been reported to have censored COVID-19 related terms since December 31st in a notable incident, Dr. Li Wenliang was censured by the Wuhan police for posting about COVID-19 in a private WeChat group.

This is a threat that many cryptocurrency and Bitcoin advocates are aware of. The Internet itself is a protocol Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies depend on in order to communicate data. If the Internet is shut down or content within it is filtered/blocked, peers within a certain country would not be able to communicate with one another effectively.

If content is being censored or tracked, cryptocurrency miners and peers within a country could see their connectivity attempts to the global network be denied, effectively shuttering their ability to transact and to get the global status of the Bitcoin network.

Its why Blockstream has tried to diversify away Bitcoin from its dependency on an uncensored Internet by launching a satellite network that broadcasts data from the Bitcoin blockchain and any other data people choose to pay to upload through the Lightning Network.

This makes the cost of censoring Bitcoin and other information more expensive: nation-states go from needing to cut off domestic broadband communications to having to deploy kinetic force in space an option few countries have access to, and which would be politically unenvious even for the boldest of political leaders.

Beyond just the blunt question of on/off censorship however, cryptocurrencies and their relationship to the Internet at large pose interesting dilemmas. As central banks look more and more at digitizing their currencies and the legal attitude towards digital privacy is being redefined by COVID-19, broad changes may threaten

Centralized digital currencies will have access to lots of metadata associated per each account, including possible location data, that can be tracked and compiled.

This may be necessary in a pandemic, but in general, governments who gain hard-fought emergency powers are loath to return them. The post-9/11 period saw a spate of renewals of the authorization of military force and Patriot Act, stretched to give cover to different government powers until reform only came more than a decade later. This fact led Edward Snowden to warn that temporary surveillance powers may well outlast the COVID-19 pandemic.

As governments look to respond to COVID-19, some will look to censor the Internet and some will look to use digital tools to track their population during the crisis period, perhaps with long-lasting consequences. Both have the potential for abuse, and both pose different but ever-present threats for cryptocurrencies and our liberty at large.

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Internet Censorship During COVID-19 Is Threat To Cryptocurrencies And Liberty - Forbes

In brief

The Bitcoin Core website is now reachable through the dark web, according to a statement on March 27. It will provide a greater level of resistance against censorship.

The Bitcoin Core website posts the latest updates to the open-source Bitcoin software. Bitcoin Core is maintained by a large group of developers.

The darknet or dark web is a part of the Internet that's hidden from Google. Image: Shutterstock.

After frequent requests, this site is now reachable as a Tor hidden service through an onion address, the post stated, adding, As well as adding another means of censorship resistance, a hidden service gives an alternative trust path that doesnt rely on certificate authorities nor DNS infrastructure.

Certificate authorities check that websites are genuine while the DNS infrastructure is what connects IP addresses to domain names, such as http://www.bitcoincore.org. By making the site accessible via the dark web, it becomes less reliant on these technologies.

The dark web is a segment of the Internet not indexed by traditional search engines. On the most basic level, this means that you cant find or visit a dark web site unless you know its exact URL-address. The dark web can be accessed via the Tor browser.

While the dark web is most commonly associated with illegal activities, such as buying and selling drugs, it can be used for legitimate reasons.

In October 2019, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) made its website available to Tor users last October by providing a dark web copy. This made its content available in Vietnam, China and Iran, where it was being censored.

However, the dark web can be risky to use. As Decrypt reported last year, malicious actors have used the onion network to steal Bitcoin funds from unsuspecting users.

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Bitcoin Core shifts to dark web to resist censorship - Decrypt

Enliven lessons by discussing Supreme Court cases and challenged books.

How common is it for someone to challenge all library materials on a topic? This hasnt happened in the public library where I work, but local churches are urging members to challenge materials in schools on the occult and witchcraft.Individuals and groups have been trying to challenge all materials on specific content areas since ALAs Office for Intellectual Freedom began tracking challenges to books and materials. Childrens books about witchcraft and the occult have always been problematic to some people, but the first Harry Potter book in 1997 brought the topic front and center. Now, LGBTQ+ content is the latest area targeted by churches, community organizations, and individuals wishing to control what children read. Their rationale: Children will be warped by the topic.

Since school and public libraries make their catalogs available online, its easy for censors to list materials they deem inappropriate for children. This can be controlled with a good materials reconsideration policy. It should make clear that individual materials may be challenged and reconsidered, but not entire topics. This may halt broad efforts to ban materials dealing with a specific issue.

An eighth grade teacher wants to develop a different approach to teaching the First Amendment to her students. She says they are bored with the textbook analysis.Students need to understand the First Amendment in its historical context, and they also need to know how to apply it to their own lives. Suggest that the teacher assign them to read about Supreme Court cases where students have fought for First Amendment rights:

1. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District(1969)

2. Board of Education v. Pico(1982)

3. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier(1988)

Debating both sides of an issue helps students understand how complicated free speech is today. Have them discuss how Morse v. Frederick (2007)is different from Tinker v. Des Moines. It appears to be a similar issue about students right to free speech in school, but the Supreme Court ruled against the former while ruling in favor of Tinker.

Book censorship is still a major problem in schools. Give students a list of challenged titles and ask them to check ones theyve read. Discuss why each has been challenged. Divide the class into three groups and have each read a challenged book. I suggest The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas,American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, and The House of Scorpion by Nancy Farmer.

Each group should then conduct a mock Reconsideration Committee meeting, an opportunity for students to listen to all sides of an issue.

I encourage the teacher to include a discussion about rights and responsibilities. This should include appropriate behavior on social media sites. Most students dont realize how inflammatory speech or bullying on social media can get them in trouble at school.

The internet is like the historical public square where anyone can speak about any topic and slant it to their own bias. Its increasingly important that teachers help students recognize such biases and encourage them to read about topics from many viewpoints before they form an opinion. All Americans have the right to express themselves, but their thoughts will be better heard if they back their ideas with relevant information.

I work in a large public library system. All materials are selected by the collection development staff. I asked why so few graphic novels were bought for the childrens collection and was told that most graphic novels arent appropriate.This is simply not true. Reviews show just how many graphic novels are available for children. Someone in that department is interjecting their own bias. Arrange a meeting with the collection development staff. If that doesnt work, speak to the director.

Pat Scales is the former chair of ALAs Intellectual Freedom Committee. Send questions to pscales@bellsouth.net.

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Bored with the First Amendment | Scales on Censorship - School Library Journal