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In August, 1942 a newspaper columnist received a "very stern letter" from the U.S. government because she had described the weather during a trip with her husband. Eleanor Roosevelt promised not to do it again.

That the First Lady would be so reprimanded demonstrates the scope and power of American censoring authorities during WW2. As part of the 1941 War Powers Act, the Lady's husband created the Office of Censorship, and appointed Byron Price, a respected Associated Press editor, to run it. Price convinced the President to let the media censor itself. He issued guidelines, but they came down to one pre-publication question for reporters: Is this information I would to like to have if I were the enemy? 14,462 employees of the Office of Censorship asked the same question, while monitoring all U.S. media.

Voluntary self-censorship worked well, even if it meant battlefront reportage that ran heavily to human-interest stories. As requested, newspapers didn't publish photographs of dead American troops until 1944, when the government wanted to motivate home front support. Reporters knew the war's biggest storythe coming atom bombtwo years in advance, and kept the secret. They knew the war's longest story tooPresident Roosevelt's failing healthand kept that secret. In fact, Price contended that of the thousands of stories filed, only once did a U.S. journalist intentionally break the rules.

Some book publishers seemed eager to censor themselves. Existing manuscripts critical of some allies, for instance, weren't released until after the war. Publisher Bennett Cerf even suggested to his colleagues that they "check their backlists carefully," and eliminate any books that suggested Russia, "our (new) friend in need," was a less-than-splendid operation.

By 1942, 10,000 civil servants were reading and censoring a million pieces of mail weekly, especially those to or from POW's and other internees. (At the same time, they watched for potentially valuable information. Loose lips could also sink the other guy's ships.) GI's writing home-all subject to censorship by officers-were prohibited from mentioning anything about the military situation around them. Their families were encouraged to write back frequently, sending light, happy letters that were non-specific about life and especially work at home. Allegedly, that's what combat soldiers wanted to read, even if, as in one case, a D-Day veteran learned all about how difficult Pledge Week had been at Kappa Kappa Gamma.

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The Perilous Fight . Censorship | PBS

Censorship blocks something from being read, heard, or seen. If you've ever heard the sound of bleeping when someone is speaking on television, that's censorship.

To "censor" is to review something and to choose to remove or hide parts of it that are considered unacceptable. Censorship is the name for the process or idea of keeping things like obscene word or graphic images from an audience. There is also such a thing as self-censorship, which is when you refrain from saying certain things or possibly re-wording them depending on who is listening.

Definitions of censorship

1

censorship in the form of prudish expurgation

censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality

the act of deleting something written or printed

all types of censorship conducted by personnel of the armed forces

censorship under civil authority of communications entering or leaving of crossing the borders of the United States or its territories or possessions

military censorship of civilian communications (correspondence or printed matter of films) entering or leaving of circulating within territories controlled by armed forces

security review of news (including all information or material intended for dissemination to the public) subject to the jurisdiction of the armed forces

military censorship of communication to and from prisoners of war and civilian internees held by the armed forces

military censorship of personal communications to or from persons in the armed forces

intelligence activities concerned with identifying and counteracting the threat to security posed by hostile intelligence organizations or by individuals engaged in espionage or sabotage or subversion or terrorism

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censorship - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com

One of the early nicknames for the Internet was the "information superhighway" because it was supposed to provide the average person with fast access to a practically limitless amount of data. For many users, that's exactly what accessing the Internet is like. For others, it's as if the information superhighway has some major roadblocks in the form of Internet censorship.

The motivations for censorship range from well-intentioned desires to protect children from unsuitable content to authoritarian attempts to control a nation's access to information. No matter what the censors' reasons are, the end result is the same: They block access to the Web pages they identify as undesirable.

Internet censorship isn't just a parental or governmental tool. There are several software products on the consumer market that can limit or block access to specific Web sites. Most people know these programs as Web filters. Censorship opponents have another name for them: Censorware.

While there are some outspoken supporters and opponents of Internet censorship, it's not always easy to divide everyone into one camp or another. Not everyone uses the same tactics to accomplish goals. Some opponentsof censorship challenge government policies in court. Others take the role of information freedom fighters, providing people with clandestine ways to access information.

In this article, we'll look at the different levels of Internet censorship, from off-the-shelf Web filters to national policy. We'll also learn about the ways some people are trying to fight censorship.

We'll start off by looking at Internet censorship on the domestic level.

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How Internet Censorship Works - HowStuffWorks

In unprecedented criticism of the White House, 38 journalism groups have assailed the president's team for censoring media coverage, limiting access to top officials and overall politically-driven suppression of the news.

In a letter to President Obama, the 38, led by the Society of Professional Journalists, said efforts by government officials to stifle or block coverage has grown for years and reached a high-point under his administration despite Obama's 2008 campaign promise to provide transparency.

Worse, they said: As access for reporters has been cut off, the administration has opened the door to lobbyists, special interests and people with money.

And as a result, they wrote, Obama only has himself to blame for the current cynicism of his administration. You need look no further than your own administration for a major source of that frustration politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies. We call on you to take a stand to stop the spin and let the sunshine in, wrote David Cuillier, president of SPJ.

More from the Washington Examiner

Nearly three-quarters of Republicans approve of the criteria that have been put in place.

08/04/15 12:08 PM

The administration has dismissed similar charges from other journalism groups, notably the White House Correspondents Association, but the new letter sent Tuesday provided several examples of censorship and efforts to block reporter access. Among them:

Officials blocking reporters requests to talk to specific staff people.

Excessive delays in answering interview requests that stretch past reporters deadlines.

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Censorship: 38 journalism groups slam Obama's 'politically ...

Illustration by John Ritter

Many foreigners who come to China for the Olympics will use the Internet to tell people back home what they have seen and to check what else has happened in the world.

The first thing theyll probably notice is that Chinas Internet seems slow. Partly this is because of congestion in Chinas internal networks, which affects domestic and international transmissions alike. Partly it is because even electrons take a detectable period of time to travel beneath the Pacific Ocean to servers in America and back again; the trip to and from Europe is even longer, because that goes through America, too. And partly it is because of the delaying cycles imposed by Chinas system that monitors what people are looking for on the Internet, especially when theyre looking overseas. Thats what foreigners have heard about.

Theyll likely be surprised, then, to notice that Chinas Internet seems surprisingly free and uncontrolled. Can they search for information about Tibet independence or Tiananmen shooting or other terms they have heard are taboo? Probablyand theyll be able to click right through to the controversial sites. Even if they enter the Chinese-language term for democracy in China, theyll probably get results. What about Wikipedia, famously off-limits to users in China? They will probably be able to reach it. Naturally the visitors will wonder: Whats all this Ive heard about the Great Firewall and Chinas tight limits on the Internet?

In reality, what the Olympic-era visitors will be discovering is not the absence of Chinas electronic control but its new refinementand a special Potemkin-style unfettered access that will be set up just for them, and just for the length of their stay. According to engineers I have spoken with at two tech organizations in China, the government bodies in charge of censoring the Internet have told them to get ready to unblock access from a list of specific Internet Protocol (IP) addressescertain Internet cafs, access jacks in hotel rooms and conference centers where foreigners are expected to work or stay during the Olympic Games. (I am not giving names or identifying details of any Chinese citizens with whom I have discussed this topic, because they risk financial or criminal punishment for criticizing the system or even disclosing how it works. Also, I have not gone to Chinese government agencies for their side of the story, because the very existence of Internet controls is almost never discussed in public here, apart from vague statements about the importance of keeping online information wholesome.)

Depending on how you look at it, the Chinese governments attempt to rein in the Internet is crude and slapdash or ingenious and well crafted. When American technologists write about the control system, they tend to emphasize its limits. When Chinese citizens discuss itat least with methey tend to emphasize its strength. All of them are right, which makes the governments approach to the Internet a nice proxy for its larger attempt to control peoples daily lives.

Disappointingly, Great Firewall is not really the right term for the Chinese governments overall control strategy. China has indeed erected a firewalla barrier to keep its Internet users from dealing easily with the outside worldbut that is only one part of a larger, complex structure of monitoring and censorship. The official name for the entire approach, which is ostensibly a way to keep hackers and other rogue elements from harming Chinese Internet users, is the Golden Shield Project. Since that term is too creepy to bear repeating, Ill use the control system for the overall strategy, which includes the Great Firewall of China, or GFW, as the means of screening contact with other countries.

In America, the Internet was originally designed to be free of choke points, so that each packet of information could be routed quickly around any temporary obstruction. In China, the Internet came with choke points built in. Even now, virtually all Internet contact between China and the rest of the world is routed through a very small number of fiber-optic cables that enter the country at one of three points: the Beijing-Qingdao-Tianjin area in the north, where cables come in from Japan; Shanghai on the central coast, where they also come from Japan; and Guangzhou in the south, where they come from Hong Kong. (A few places in China have Internet service via satellite, but that is both expensive and slow. Other lines run across Central Asia to Russia but carry little traffic.) In late 2006, Internet users in China were reminded just how important these choke points are when a seabed earthquake near Taiwan cut some major cables serving the country. It took months before international transmissions to and from most of China regained even their pre-quake speed, such as it was.

Thus Chinese authorities can easily do something that would be harder in most developed countries: physically monitor all traffic into or out of the country. They do so by installing at each of these few international gateways a device called a tapper or network sniffer, which can mirror every packet of data going in or out. This involves mirroring in both a figurative and a literal sense. Mirroring is the term for normal copying or backup operations, and in this case real though extremely small mirrors are employed. Information travels along fiber-optic cables as little pulses of light, and as these travel through the Chinese gateway routers, numerous tiny mirrors bounce reflections of them to a separate set of Golden Shield computers.Here the terms creepiness is appropriate. As the other routers and servers (short for file servers, which are essentially very large-capacity computers) that make up the Internet do their best to get the packet where its supposed to go, Chinas own surveillance computers are looking over the same information to see whether it should be stopped.

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The Connection Has Been Reset - The Atlantic