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July 18, 2017 BeijingUsers of WhatsApp in China and security researchers have reported widespread service disruptions amid fears that the popular messaging service may be at least partially blocked by authorities in the world's most populous country.

WhatsApp users in China reported Tuesday on other social media platforms that the app was partly inaccessible unless virtual private network software was used to circumvent China's censorship apparatus, known colloquially as The Great Firewall.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook and offers end-to-end encryption, has a relatively small but loyal following among users seeking a greater degree of privacy from government snooping than afforded by popular domestic app WeChat, which is ubiquitous but closely monitored and filtered.

Questions over WhatsApp's status come at a politically fraught time in China. The government is in the midst of preparing for a sensitive party congress while Chinese censors this week revved up a sprawling effort to scrub all mention of Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died Thursday in government custody.

A report this week by the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab detailed how Chinese censors were able to intercept, in real time, images commemorating Liu in private one-on-one chats on WeChat, a feat that hinted at the government's image recognition capabilities.

It appeared that pictures were also the focus of the move to censor WhatsApp. Late Tuesday, users in China could send texts over WhatsApp without the use of VPNs, but not images.

Nadim Kobeissi, a cryptography researcher based in Paris who has been investigating the WhatsApp disruption, said he believed The Great Firewall was only blocking access to WhatsApp servers that route media between users, while leaving servers that handle text messages untouched. He said voice messages also appeared to be blocked.

But there was no evidence to suggest that Chinese authorities were decrypting WhatsApp messages, Mr. Kobeissi added.

A Chinese censorship researcher known by his pseudonym Charlie Smith said authorities appeared to be blocking non-text WhatsApp messages wholesale precisely because they have not been able to selectively block content on the platform like they have with WeChat, which is produced by Shenzhen-based internet giant Tencent and legally bound to cooperate with Chinese security agencies.

Because WhatsApp content is encrypted, "they have moved to brute censor all non-text content," Mr. Smith said in an email. "It would not be surprising to find that everything on WhatsApp gets blocked, forcing users in China to use unencrypted, monitored, and censored services like WeChat."

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said he had no information on the issue when asked by reporters on Tuesday.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. WhatsApp is one of the world's most widely used messaging services, with more than 1.2 billion users.

Signal, another encrypted messaging service, appeared to also have patchy service with significant delays.

China has long blocked Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, with officials arguing that foreign social media services operating beyond their control pose a threat to national security. But authorities in China, as with other governments, are paying increasing attention to encrypted messaging apps.

After Beijing waged its largest-ever crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists in 2015, the People's Daily newspaper, the ruling Communist Party's official mouthpiece, singled out Telegram as the platform where lawyers the coordinated their activities. And in closely orchestrated and televised trials, the arrested lawyers read scripted confessions explaining how they used the apps to communicate freely with collaborators overseas.

Telegram has since been blocked, with many Chinese dissidents switching in recent months to WhatsApp.

The progressive tightening of messaging apps forces Chinese users to resort to domestic apps such as WeChat "to simply function and have day-to-day communications," said Kobeissi, the security researcher. "Then they can be monitored en masse."

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Disruption of WhatsApp in China triggers censorship fears - Christian Science Monitor

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos poses on a lorry in Bangalore.

Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images

Among big American tech companies, the race for India is on. With 355 million internet users (and rapidly growing) up for grabs, its no surprise that firms like Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon are investing billions of dollars to make inroads in the worlds largest democracy.

But as they do, theyre running up against a particular conundrum: how to cater to the countrys cosmopolitan consumers without offending its more conservative classes, including the right-wing government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a surprising number of cases, companies are erring on the side of censorshipfor instance, by blocking images of dead cows and ads for anti-nationalist home goods.

Indias approach to internet governance isnt in the same league as the heavy-handed censorship of neighbor and rival power China though, which has historically blocked popular websites including Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook through its Great Firewall. India represents a softer form of sanitization. By law, the nation offers a constitutional protection of free speech and limits the governments ability to crack down on online content. But that doesnt mean the internet has become a free-for-all. For example, India frequently leads the world in government requests to Facebook for account data and for content removal (mostly related to local laws against anti-religious or hate speech). Many companies also choose to pre-emptively clean up content to appease the government and avoid backlash from of Indias culturally conservative classes.

As noted in a post by the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi on Legally India, the practice of self-censorship is particularly widespread among international video streaming services. The authors suggest that the platforms may be trying to find their place in the Indian market without drawing attention for the wrong reasons.

This May, Netflix released a censored form of the Hindi dramedy Angry Indian Goddessesfor viewers in India, even though it made an uncensored cut available for foreign audiences in April. According to Indian digital news site MediaNama, it seems that the streaming service released the version of the filmwhich covers stigmatized issues like homosexuality, rape, and castethat had been approved for theatrical release by the Indias Central Board of Film Certification. But that body doesnt have jurisdiction over online content from platforms like Netflix and recently implied it has no intention of regulating online content in the foreseeable future.

Instead, it appears Netflixs decision was a case of self-censorship. According to the films production company and director, the American company requested the edited version of the movie first, apparently preferring to stream the version that cut references to the Indian government, blurred an image of an Indian goddess, and cut out dialogue referring to an Indian figure, the holy Hindu bovine cow, and, for unknown reasons, the words guitar and lunch.

Business is Business. They would rather censor stuff and stay on the good graces of the government of India than appease users and risk controversy, wrote one Reddit user in a discussion about the streaming services seemingly arbitrary censorship decisions in the country.

After getting complaints from confused India-based viewers, Netflix released an uncut version of the movie in June.

Amazon Prime Video also routinely eliminates nudity and other inappropriate content from its vast streaming catalog. Since its 2016 launch in India, many TV shows and films available in the region have been edited to the point where plots elude human comprehension. Among others, Amazon heavily cut an episode of Jeremy Clarksons car show The Grand Tourthat featured the host driving a car out of animal carcasses. Despite complaints, Amazon defended the move to Mashable India, saying it wanted to "keep Indian cultural sensitivities in mind. Considering the recent episodes of violence allegedly tied to beef consumption, Amazon may have thought it incendiary to show the dead body of an animal so highly revered in Hindu circles.

Amazon has also had to mind its online merchandise. The everything store came under fire in January for selling doormats with the Indian national flag design. (In India and other South Asian countries, feet on such a symbol would be considered an insult.) Upon learning of the product, Indias Foreign Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted, Amazon must tender unconditional apology. They must withdraw all products insulting our national flag immediately. In a subsequent tweet, she threatened to withhold and rescind visas from Amazon employees if action was not taken quickly. The company swiftly complied.

Tinder, too, hasnt been immune. The hookup app took criticism earlier this year after releasing a seemingly tone-deaf video ad for potential Indian users, which featured a conservative mother surprisingly approve of her daughters date, saying, From my side, there is a right swipe for this."

Some criticized what they saw as a regressive message at odds with the apps reputation for facilitating casual sex. Others pointed out how not OK their parents would be with them meeting up with strangers in a culture where open dating has traditionally been taboo.

If ma knew her daughter is on a hang-and-maybe-bang app, shed kick me outta the house, not sweetly send me off to drunk-make out with a rando, one user told BuzzFeed India.

When Tinder India CEO Taru Kapoor was asked about the video by Huffington Post India, she admitted the ad might not have been perfectly executed. But, she said, it was part of a larger effort the company would continue to make to show that online dating could appeal to a broad range of Indian users. Although differing from Amazon Prime Video and Netflixs self-censorship, the advertisement tied into a broader trend of appealing to more conservative audiences.

As huge profit margins and success in the Indian markets are already demonstrating, that may not be an unwise business decision.

Link:
As American Tech Firms Move to India, Many Choose to Self-Censor - Slate Magazine (blog)

In one experiment, researchers at the Citizen Lab found that a photo of Liu Xiaobo posted to an international users WeChat social media feed was visible to other users abroad but was hidden from users with Chinese accounts.

The heightened yet uneven censorship in recent days has elicited frustration and confusion among Mr. Lius supporters.

On the day after Mr. Lius death, one user posted on his WeChat feed: Did you see what I just sent? No, I cant see it. For the last two days, this has been the constant question and answer among friends.

The aggressive attempt at censorship is just the latest indication of the strong grip that the Chinese government maintains on local internet companies. In addition to automatically filtering certain keywords and images, internet companies like Baidu, Sina and Tencent also employ human censors who retroactively comb through posts and delete what they deem as sensitive content, often based on government directives.

Failure to block such content can result in fines for companies or worse, revocation of their operational licenses. Censors have been on especially high alert this year in light of the Communist Partys 19th National Party Congress in the fall.

Over the years, the constant cat-and-mouse game between Chinese censors and internet users has led to the rise of a robust internet culture in which censorship is normalized and satire and veiled references are par for the course.

So even as censors stepped up scrutiny in recent days, many savvy Chinese internet users found ways to evade those efforts. In tributes to Mr. Liu, users referred to him as Brother Liu or even XXX. They posted passages from his poems and abstract illustrations of Mr. Liu and his wife, Liu Xia.

Over the weekend, however, the tributes gave way to scathing critiques as friends and supporters of Mr. Liu reacted angrily to the news of Mr. Lius cremation and sea burial under strict government oversight.

One user took to his WeChat feed on Sunday to express disgust with the use of Mr. Lius corpse in what some called a blatant propaganda exercise. Swift cremation, swift sea burial, he wrote. Scared of the living, scared of the dead, and even more scared of the dead who are immortal.

Original post:
Liu Xiaobo's Death Pushes China's Censors Into Overdrive - The ... - New York Times

BBC News

Why China censors banned Winnie the Pooh BBC News The blocking of Winnie the Pooh might seem like a bizarre move by the Chinese authorities but it is part of a struggle to restrict clever bloggers from getting around their country's censorship. When is a set of wrist watches not just a set of wrist ... Winnie the Pooh is the latest victim of censorship in ChinaVox Chinese Censors Have Apparently Blocked 'Winnie the Pooh' Over a Silly MemeGizmodo China censors Winnie the Pooh on social mediaFOX 61 Financial Times -NBCNews.com -Global Risk Insights -The Guardian all 102 news articles »

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Why China censors banned Winnie the Pooh - BBC News

After President Trump won the 2016 election, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was hit with a wave of complaints from liberals claiming "fake news" on his social media platform had contributed to the Republican's victory. Zuckerberg responded by setting up a board to vet false reports and stacked it with left-leaning media outfits: Snopes, Politifact, FactCheck.org, ABC News and Associated Press (which just issued writing guidelines discouraging use of the phrase "pro-life" in favor of "anti-abortion").

And in May, Zuckerberg placedNew York TimesveteranAlex Hardiman at the helm of Facebook's News products, in charge of overseeing monetization and collaboration with other news organizations.

It's this same department that manipulated news content to artificially bump left-leaning causes while suppressing conservative stories. A 2016 report reveals that former Facebook staff admit they "routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readersfrom the social network's influential 'trending' news section."

Facebook news curators also claimed they were ordered to artificially inject topics into the trending section (e.g., Black Lives Matter), even when they weren't popular, while deleting articles related to the GOP. According to reporter Michael Nunez,

Facebook's news section operates like a traditional newsroom, reflecting the biases of its workers and the institutional imperatives of the corporation. Imposing human editorial values onto the lists of topics an algorithm spits out is by no means a bad thing but it is in stark contrast to thecompany's claimsthat the trending module simply lists "topics that have recentlybecome popular on Facebook."

The Wall Street Journalreported in 2016 that Facebook had been caughtcensoring conservative, pro-Israel postswhile allowing liberal, pro-Palestinian content.

Even more concerning, in 2015 Zuckerberg wascaught agreeing to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's requesttohelp get rid of anti-immigration posts on social media.

The conversation, caught on a hot mic, involved messages about the refugee crisis, with Zuckerberg admitting "we need to do some work" on the issue.

"Are you working on this?" Merkel asked him.

"Yeah," Zuckerberg answered.

Shortly after, Facebook implemented its "Initiative for Civil Courage Online" to delete what it deemed "racist" or "xenophobic" comments. But Douglas Murray at the Gatestone Institute warned it was a tool for further censorship of legitimate conservative voices.

"The sinister thing about what Facebook is doing is that it is now removing speech that presumably almost everybody might consider racist,"said Murray, "along with speech that only someone at Facebook decides is 'racist.'"

Last year, WikiLeaks exposed anattempted meet-up between Zuckerberg and the Clinton campaignin order to give the entrepreneur advice on how to "move the needle on the specific public policy issues he cares most about."

Although Zuckerberg hasnever publicly identified as Republican or Democrat, and has contributed to candidates of both parties in the past, according to Federal Election Committee records, his political action committee made its biggest one-time donation to the Democratic Party in San Francisco in 2015 when it wrote a check for $10,000. He's also been open about his criticism of Trump and his immigration policies.

And it's not just Facebook. Other internet giants are also in on the conservative targeting: Google, Vimeo, YouTube, Twitter.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in June 2016 that Google was "directly engaged in Hillary Clinton's campaign."

"The chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, set up a company to run the digital component of Hillary Clinton's campaign," Assange declared at a journalism forum in May 2016. A number of Google employees appear in theWikiLeaks Clinton email archives, noting a cozy relationship with the Democrat leader. Evidence shows the search engineskewed resultsfor hits pertaining to Clinton's health back when it was a hot topic.

Google also had a close association with Obama: It was the single most frequent visitor to his White House, averaging one visit per week.

"Google controls 80 percent of the smartphone market through its control of Android," Assange noted, "and if you control the device itself that people use to read then anything that they connect to through that device you have control over as well."

The video hosting platform Vimeo is also targeting voices that don't fit the leftist narrative. Over the course of two years, it's deleted content and shut down accounts of ministries that help homosexuals leave the gay lifestyle.

In March, Vimeo deleted without warning 850 videos from Christian ex-homosexualDavid Kyle Foster's website. When Foster wrote to ask why,Vimeo responded, "To put it plainly, we don't believe that homosexuality requires a cure and we don't allow videos on our platform that espouse this point of view. ... We also consider this basic viewpoint to display a demeaning attitude toward a specific group, which is something that we do not allow."

And last year, Vimeo took down the account of Restored Hope, a group of ministries that help rid individuals of unwanted same-sex desires. It also closed down the account of theNational Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, headed by the late Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, a pioneer in reparative therapy.

Foster has called Vimeo's actions "pure religious bigotry and censorship."

Social media giant Twitter has displayedbias against the pro-life message, censoring ads critical of Planned Parenthood while giving the abortion giant free rein to spread its misinformation online.

"Planned Parenthoodis allowed to promote their pro-abortion and misleading messages, whileLive Actionis barred from promoting any content exposing abortion andPlanned Parenthood," said Live Action CEO Lila Rose in June, after Twitter removed the pro-life group's ability to advertise.

Contents of banned ads were benign, including a tweet that declared thatPlanned Parenthoodis "about abortion, not women's health care," accompanied by a brief, all-text video casting doubt on the abortion conglomerate's "healthcare services."

More than ever, conservatives are at the mercy of those controlling the organs of social communication, and must find a way to preserve their voice on the internet in the face of increasing encroachments. Church Militant relies heavily on various online platforms to publish and promote our content, and we recognize the growing threat of censorship from the powers that be, most who hate the message of the Catholic faith.

Just this past week, Church Militant was the target of hackers, who were able to take down the site for a full day. Although no internal information was compromised, our message the message of Christ in His Church was kept from being disseminated to the millions who regularly view our programming as well as to new viewers who need to hear the truth.

Church Militant has taken beginning steps to protect the apostolate and its content by purchasing our own internal server but it comes at a cost $50,000, to be precise. If you believe in the mission of Church Militant and want us to continue spreading the light of the Faith, reporting on issues that matter to Catholics, and being the voice for authentic reform in the Church, consider donating to ourPreserving Catholics campaignto cover the cost of our server. We're grateful for any amount, large or small. We are especially grateful for your prayers in support of our work.

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The Coming Censorship From the Left - Church Militant