My book, The Blogging Revolution, examines the Western corporates that assist the Chinese regime in its internet censorship program. According to yesterday’s New York Times, the Communists are cracking down ever-harder in the last months: It was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek alternative to the stultifying variety show beamed into hundreds of millions of living…
Showing all posts tagged Google
Perhaps they should knock next time
Israel is using Google’s Gmail to try and recruit collaborators in the Gaza Strip. The following is the text of a leaflet dropped by Israel into Gaza: To the residents of the Gaza Strip, Take responsibility for your fate! If you wish to provide help and assistance to your people in the sector, call the…
Bloggers under fire
I was interviewed by Sarah Arnold in US magazine The Nation for an article published online on December 23: According to a Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report released December 4, of the 125 media workers in prison – a list that includes Ibrahim Jassam, a photographer held in US custody in Iraq – more…
Regaining the upper hand?
Yahoo threw down the gauntlet to bitter rivals Google and Microsoft yesterday by cutting the length of time that it retains information about what its users are doing online. It will now keep information about online searches for only 90 days – down from 13 months – before ‘anonymising’ the data by getting rid of…
Who selects what we read?
Google this week admitted that its staff will pick and choose what appears in its search results. It’s a historic statement – and nobody has yet grasped its significance.
Anti-Semitism is seemingly everywhere
Just what is the real relationship between Google’s YouTube and the notoriously anti-Arab US-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL)?
The Blogging Revolution: a look at the repression of online journalism around the world
Democracy Now! is the world’s finest independent news service, based in New York and known for its fearless investigations of the major issues of the day (and many ignored by the corporate media.) I was interviewed live on their TV/radio program in the studio this morning about my book, The Blogging Revolution: JUAN GONZALEZ: A…
Going online in repressive regimes
My following talk was presented today to a full room at Harvard University’s Berkman Centre: Harvard University’s Berkman Centre for Internet and Society Luncheon Series, 25 November 2008 The Blogging Revolution: Going online in repressive regimes Antony Loewenstein Internet censorship is something that only happens in non-democratic states. Regimes that want to crush free speech…
Iran isn’t the only problem
Internet censorship is increasingly occurring in so-called democracies, including Argentina: Since 2006, Internet users in Argentina have been blocked from searching for information about some of country’s most notable individuals. Over 100 people have successfully secured temporary restraining orders that direct Google and Yahoo! Argentina to scrub the results of search queries. The list of…
Government uploads hypocrisy with internet censorship
My following article appears in today’s Melbourne Age: Before this year’s Beijing Olympic Games, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd chastised the Chinese authorities for blocking full access to the internet for the assembled world media: “My attitude to our friends in China is very simple”, he said. “They should have nothing to fear by open digital…