Russians fight Twitter and Facebook battles over Putin election

Protest against Vladimir Putin United party over elections have escalated across social media, including Twitter and Facebook, with a flood of automated counterattacks. Photograph: Yana Lapikova/AFP/Getty Images

Protests against president's party escalate across social media with flood of automated counterattacks and alleged hacking

Friday 9 December 2011

Miriam Elder in Moscow

guardian.co.uk

Russians have flooded Facebook and Twitter as they organise unprecedented protests against Vladimir Putin's United Russia party. But they are not alone. Thousands of Twitter accounts appear to have been created with the sole purpose of drowning out opposition voices by flooding the service's hashtag search function.

The automated attacks have dumped a blizzard of meaningless tweets with hashtags such as #Navalny, on which tweets about Alexei Navalny are collated, making it impossible to follow the flow of news about the arrested opposition leader. Many of the so-called "Twitter bots" have now been shut down.

The flood of fake tweets came after liberal websites, including the LiveJournal blogging platform, the website for radio station Ekho Moskvy and weekly journal Bolshoi Gorod , were shut down by distributed denial of service attacks on Sunday, the day of Russia's disputed parliamentary vote.

U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors

Afghans from Fab Lab worked to install a FabFi wireless mesh radio with parts from a recycled oil canister. (Credit: Hameed Tasal/Fab Folk)

A case filled with enough equipment to set up an autonomous, metropolitan WiFi network. The New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group, is developing a portable, WiFi-based network that could be carried into contested regions and allow dissident groups to set up networks independent of a government-controlled network. (Credit: Philip Scott Andrews/The New York Times)

June 12, 2011
By JAMES GLANZ and JOHN MARKOFF
The New York Times

The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks.

The effort includes secretive projects to create independent cellphone networks inside foreign countries, as well as one operation out of a spy novel in a fifth-floor shop on L Street in Washington, where a group of young entrepreneurs who look as if they could be in a garage band are fitting deceptively innocent-looking hardware into a prototype “Internet in a suitcase.”

Financed with a $2 million State Department grant, the suitcase could be secreted across a border and quickly set up to allow wireless communication over a wide area with a link to the global Internet.

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Some projects involve technology that the United States is developing; others pull together tools that have already been created by hackers in a so-called liberation-technology movement sweeping the globe.

Cambodia drafts law to regulate internet

20 January 2009
By Alice Kok
FutureGov.net

The Ministry of Information is currently drafting a law that will extend current print media rules to other media platform, including the internet.

“This law will be used to formalise content management rules so that they can be easily applied by future information ministers,” says Khieu Kanharith Information Minister. “We are drafting the legislation in order to have a proper law to manage radio, television and other platforms,” he said.

The minister says the recent explosion of media outlets has made the law necessary.

The number of internet users in Cambodia has increased from 6000 in 2000 to more than 70,000 regular Internet users today. The country also has 9 aerial television channels, 60 cable channels and dozens of print media.

The Ministry of Information said that the major intent of this law is to control the publishing of audio-visual data, of games, and of entertainment programmes and advertisements through the Internet, to ensure moral respect. Electronic news portals will not be affected.

After completion, the draft law will be sent to the Council of Ministers for approval.

Internet exempt from libel law: govt

Thursday, 15 January 2009
Written by Brendan Brady and Sam Rith
The Phnom Penh Post

Information Ministry denies legislation extending libel to audovisual media will limit internet

The Ministry of Information has denied that new libel legislation it is drafting for audiovisual media will bear on the internet, despite previous claims by its minister, Khieu Kanharith, that the recent explosion of websites was an impetus for the measure.

In a statement released Tuesday, the ministry said the law would target "audiovisual content in radio, television and print only", adding that public criticism of it levelled by local journalists earlier in the day was "absolutely untruthful".

But Sam Rithy Doung Hak, a monitor for the Cambodian Association for the Protection of Journalists, the group that condemned the proposed legislation as unwarranted censorship, said the ministry was simply "backtracking ... probably because of pressure from international groups based here".

Despite the ministry's claims, he said popular websites and cartoons critical of the government would be susceptible to censorship if the law were introduced. He singled out the online materials of news aggregator Khmer Intelligence and Australian-based Khmer cartoonist Sacrava as potential targets.

Khieu Kanharith was not available for comment Wednesday.

Don't regulate criticism

Local leaders of Cambodia's online community remain deeply cynical of any government efforts to regulate media content given its shaky track record. Cambodia is currently ranked 128th - or "partially free" - on the US-based Freedom House organisation's 2008 press freedom list

Keo Kounila, a local blogger and journalist, said vibrant opposition voices were essential to the fabric of a democracy, and saw the proposed bill as counterproductive to growth of the country's nascent political environment.

"The government should try to understand criticism [directed at it], not regulate it. This is similar to what China is trying to do," she said, referring to the vigorous online censorship conducted by the communist state.

Norbert Klein, a Phnom Penh-based German who is credited with having introduced, internet to Cambodia in 1994, called the proposed legislation "very problematic".

"If there is legislation, it should be technically enforceable and legal. Neither is the case."
The demands of the law were unrealistic and unprecedented, he added.

"When the law says every ISP will need a license from the Information Ministry and Communication Ministry, no other country in the world has that," said Klein, who is also a policy adviser for ICANN, an international non-profit group that deliberates on a wide range of internet protocol issues. He said media censorship was susceptible to "escalation" in times of political turmoil and questioned the government's ability to regulate content using standards accepted by the population.

Ministry of Information denies it wants to control the Internet

Khieu Kanharith (Photo: DR, Cambodge Soir Hebdo)

15 Jan 2009
By Pen Bona
Cambodge Soir Hebdo
Translated from French by Tola Ek
Click here to read the article in French

The draft law only aims at audiovisual and print media, the authority claimed.

In a declaration dated 13 January, the ministry of Information denies information in which a draft law to control the Internet is under preparation.

On 12 January, the Cambodian Association for Protection of Journalist (CJPA) expressed its concerns about this draft law which could affect the freedom of expression.

“Neither in the past, neither today, nor in the future, will the control of Internet sites be part of the ministry’s mission,” the declaration indicated.

According to this declaration, the draft law affects only radio stations, TV stations, as well as printing shops.

Cambodia drafts law to regulate internet strictly [-What can it do to overseas websites?]

PHNOM PENH, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Cambodian Ministry of Information is drafting a law that will extend the libel, defamation and ethics rules currently governing print media to other media platforms, including Internet, national media said on Tuesday.

The law will be used to formalize content management rules so that they can be easily applied by future information ministers, the English-language daily The Phnom Penh Post quoted Information Minister Khieu Kanharith as saying.

"We are drafting the legislation in order to have a proper law to manage radio, television and other platforms," he said.

The recent explosion of media outlets of print media made the law necessary, he said, pointing to the increase in websites in recent years, as well as the growth in radio and television.

It is unknown when the draft law will be finished as much work needs to be done before it can be sent to the Council of Ministers for approval, he added.

Cambodia now has 9 aerial television channels, 60 cable channels, several satellite and Internet channels, and dozens of newspapers and magazines, according to official figures.

The number of websites remains unknown yet.