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Apple has reportedly pulled a censorship-circumventing app from the Chinese iOS App Store. The app, titled FreeWeibo and developed through collaboration with Radio Netherlands Worldwide, is said to have worked around the government's censorship filters for content posted on the Chinese microblogging service Sina Weibo.

The app is believed to have been removed due to pressure from the Chinese government, according to a Agence France-Presse report that was spotted by AppleInsider. Apple's app review board allegedly told the developer that its app was pulled because it violates local laws.

Apple has been criticized for allegedly bowing to government pressure rather than maintaining consistent App Store content guidelines. The company removed several other titles from the Chinese App Store in recent months, including an app with banned books and a utility that bypassed the government's Internet firewall.

"Apple's image of being a hip and trendy company is eroding -- the brand will hold little cachet for the consumer because of actions like these and in the long run that means less Apple devices will be sold," said a FreeWeibo co-founder who goes by the pseudonym Charlie Smith. "Apple makes it impossible for apps concerned with issues such as free speech or human rights to find a home in the Chinese App store."

by MacNN Staff

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Apple pulls censorship-circumventing iOS app from Chinese App Store

A Syrian man looks at his mobile phone in a neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria. (Image: Associated Press)

Random disconnections, mass censorship, and widespread online surveillance that could see activists' doors kicked down at any time by forces loyal to the country's oppressive leader.

It's just another day in the life of the Syrian Internet.

Little is known (and even less has been reported in mainstream media) about the state of Internet access in the troubled, war-torn state, or how technology is used to fight the despotic President Bashar al Assad.

Declared a civil war by the United Nations almost exactly two years ago in December 2011, the vast majority of those living, working, and fighting on the ground call it something else a "revolution" much in the way that those in Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt declared during their own uprisings in the so-called Arab Spring.

The fighting in Syria has not subsided. It has intensified, and has no end in sight. And make no mistake; the opposition forces are not winning the war. They are however far ahead in the war of words on the Western front by way of old-fashioned propaganda, thanks to a technological embrace.

But it's not fooling everyone.

Though the U.N. has previously said there is mounting evidence to show Assad and senior officials have beeninvolved in war crimes, the global body has alsovoiced concerns over the opposition's actions during the course of the conflict.

This once developed and burgeoning economy has in the last two years been ravished by fighting, where almost every city block can be a micro-battlefield. But culturally and societally it is not so far removed from the Western world. The Syrian people have kept perhaps surprisingly as up to date with modern technological advances as they can be, in spite of foreign embargoes and severed trade routes.

In speaking to ordinary civilians, media activists, opposition members, and the occasional ground fighter over the course of the last four months, it became clear the war was fought not just with weapons and words, but also over the Web.

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Censorship, surveillance, and Android phones: Syria's tech revolution, from the cutting room floor

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NEW YORK -- Months after the Arab Spring uprisings first rocked the Middle East, a group of Western free speech activists began to map the Syrian Internet.

What they discovered was evidence of government surveillance and censorship.

"We were tipped off that people in Syria were being tracked online, and that information was being used to hunt down protesters," activist Sam Covin told CBS News.

In the spring of 2011, Covin and other members of the loose-knit activist group Telecomix, which provides alternative techniques to bypass statewide blocked Internet or censored websites, began scanning the Syrian Internet to gain a better understanding of the countrys service.

The activist group was able to access Internet-connected video cameras, network switches and appliances, and even home and business routers. It also discovered more than a dozen devices made by networking gear company Blue Coat.

"The devices were not well secured -- they used 'factory settings' -- so we were able to look into what the devices were doing," he said. These appliances, Covin explained, can be used to filter and inspect Internet traffic, including encrypted and secured data, though the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company insists the technology is "not intended" to aid surveillance.

After discovering and reading more than 54 gigabytes of Blue Coat appliance log files, Covin said it "became clear that [the appliances] were being used to track online activities."

A spokesperson for Blue Coat told CBS News the company was aware its technology was being used, but vehemently denied it authorized the sale to the Syrian government. Blue Coat said it has been actively cooperating with the U.S. government since 2011 over what it described as the illegal transfer of its products into the country by third parties.

"As a result of its investigation, the U.S. Department of Commerce has fined or otherwise sanctioned several third parties in connection with the unlawful diversion of our products to Syria that took place without our knowledge," the spokesperson added.

According to the Commerce Department, evidence suggest that "U.S.-origin Internet filtering devices" are being used by the Syrian government "to block pro-democracy websites and identify pro-democracy activists as part of Syria's brutal crackdown against the Syrian people."

The rest is here:
Surveillance and censorship: Inside Syria's Internet

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