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Today in international tech news: After failed threats, France's intelligence agency draws thousands of eyes to the Wikipedia page it wanted removed. Also: A human rights group will equip activists with an electronic tracking bracelet that can trip a social media alarm; a European telecom gets big dough from Canada -- again -- to use BlackBerry; and China's Tencent defuses online angst and confirms its WeChat app will remain free.

Intelligence agents for the Direction Central du Renseignement Intrieur -- France's top intelligence agency -- were accused of censorship after threatening to arrest and charge a Wikipedia volunteer.

The hubbub originated with an article that contains classified military secrets, according to operatives, and ergo is a threat to national security. The article, which is still available, describes a military radio relay station in France that is believed to be part of the country's nuclear detection and deterrent network.

In March, the DCRI contacted Wikipedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, about taking down the page. Wikimedia replied that DCRI hadn't provided evidence that the article was a risk, and therefore left it online.

Things got more interesting last week when the DCRI summoned a 30-year-old library curator, who is a Wikipedia volunteer and who has administrator's access to the site. The man reportedly had nothing to do with the page in question but claims he was told to take it down all the same. After declining, he was reportedly told that he would be held in custody and charged for failing to comply.

This sequence of events, rather predictably, resulted in unintended consequences: The vice president of Wikimedia France said that the page in question had between 10 and 60 visitors; as of Sunday, there were "around 10,000 from around the world."

The Wikimedia VP did add, though, that the page would indeed be taken down if DCRI produces the requisite legal papers.

[Source: The Guardian]

Stockholm-based human rights group Civil Rights Defenders has issued a GPS bracelet that will send out an alert should a bracelet's owner ever be kidnapped.

The first five bracelets -- designed to tip off CRD, nearby activists and CRD's social media network -- were handed out last week at "Defenders' Days," a CRD conference. Fifty-five such bracelets will be distributed over the next 18 months.

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France Implicated in Wikipedia Censorship Threat

SINGAPORE: Acting Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong said the country's policy on censorship is evolving and moving away from censorship towards one of classification and self-regulation.

Mr Wong was speaking at a recording of Channel NewsAsia's programme "Ask Minister" where he was posed a range of questions from censorship to arts education.

He also said the government should work with a consultative panel made up of Singaporeans from diverse backgrounds and get them to share their views before setting any boundaries.

Mr Wong said: "Rather than to say these are OB markers and don't touch them whether it's politics, race or religion and say 'thou shall not touch it', I think we should move away from that and we should move to a situation where we have a dialogue on what the artist would like to convey even if it's a provocative issue on politics, race or religion and then have a conversation - whether it's with MDA that looks at content regulation or more importantly with audiences so that audiences can understand what they are doing."

Catch more of the discussion with Mr Lawrence Wong on April 9 at 8pm on "Ask Minister", exclusively on Channel NewsAsia.

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Censorship among issues to be discussed in "Ask Minister" programme

PARIS, April 8 (UPI) -- France's secret service is facing accusations of censorship for allegedly threatening to arrest a volunteer at the French version of Wikipedia over an article.

Intelligence operatives allegedly threatened to arrest and charge the volunteer unless he deleted an article on the Internet encyclopedia they claimed contained "classified" military secrets and was a risk to national security, the British newspaper The Guardian reported.

Wikipedia said the Direction Central du Renseignement Interieur failed to provide proof the article about a French military radio relay station that has been online since 2009 was a threat to the country's security or produce a legal order justifying its threats against the site.

"This is shocking and absolutely wrong," Christophe Henner, vice president of Wikimedia France, said. "We have always operated within the law and have no desire to pose a threat to individuals or nations."

The page "corresponds almost perfectly" to a publicly available television report about the military station 70 miles west of Lyon, Wikipedia said.

The station is under the control of the French air force and thought to be part of France's nuclear detection and deterrent network.

"Had the DCRI presented us with documents or a legal order showing us this was a threat to national security we would have taken down the page at once," Henner said. "Instead they summoned one of our volunteers and ordered him to take it down, saying he would be held in custody if he didn't."

More here:
French secret service in censorship flap

Dozens of Sudanese journalists protested for an end to censorship on Monday outside the offices of a respected newspaper whose editor was suspended by national security agents, a protester said.

"No to censorship," said a sign carried by the group of about 70 journalists who gathered outside the Al-Sahafa newspaper offices, the protester said.

Security forces did not intervene.

Al-Nour Ahmed Al-Nour, chief editor of the daily, said last week that agents of the powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) told him he had been suspended -- a rare action against such a prominent journalist.

He said the decision appeared to be linked to a dispute over censorship, which journalists say the NISS continues to impose.

Reporters and press freedom advocates have complained that some Sudanese journalists were banned from writing and that NISS agents regularly block the distribution of papers.

Other newspapers have been suspended from publishing, but Nour is the first chief editor to be removed.

The incident prompted Sudan's government-run press council on Sunday to issue its strongest statement in years.

The council, which licenses newspapers and registers journalists, accused the NISS of interference and called on authorities to disband the press body if it cannot function.

Journalists on Monday also delivered a message to the press council, asking for an end to censorship and for Nour to be reinstated, the protester said.

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Sudanese journalists protest against censorship

The New York Times reports that Russia has begun censoring the Internet inside its borders, acting on a law that was passed back in November.

The intention of the censorship act is to prevent easy access to information that could potentially harm children or that contravenes the law.

Facebook, for example, was asked by Russia's regulators to take down a page that they were concerned promoted suicide. The social network had until Sunday to comply, and did so, having decided that the page was not in the interest of general public health.

Twitter is also said to have complied with some requests to block local access to some posts.

Critics of the law say the censorship mechanisms are easy to abuse, and that the government could use them to oppose dissent.

Microsoft recently reported government requests for user data, and the figures indicated monitoring of activists in Russia.

China, well known for aggressive Internet censorship, was in the news recently when an analysis revealed the amazing speed of Chinese human censors for the first time.

[Image: Flickr user Ed Yourdon]

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Russia Internet Censorship Begins