The BBC World Service has published my following article about the internet in Iran (originally published on BBC Persian last week): The face of murdered Iranian woman Neda Agha Soltan, killed by a bullet in the Iranian capital Tehran, echoed around the world. Like this, the vast majority of iconic images that documented Iran’s disputed…
Showing all posts tagged Microsoft
“Very limited” web blocking in China, says a clueless Bill Gates
Microsoft founder Bill Gates seems a little too keen to keep the Chinese authorities as friends by grossly ignoring the Communist state’s sophisticated censorship program: You’ve got to decide: do you want to obey the laws of the countries you’re in or not? If not, you may not end up doing business there. Chinese efforts…
What is Google now doing in China?
My following article appears today on ABC Unleashed/The Drum: Google has threatened to withdraw entirely from China in protest at the authoritarian regime’s oppressive online censorship and continuing attempts by Chinese hackers to gain sensitive information of local human rights workers. Perhaps most significantly, Google’s Chinse search engine, Google.cn, now allows once banned material to…
The ghost of Bill Gates in the shadow of helping the Communist Party
My book The Blogging Revolution thoroughly examines the complicity of Western multinationals such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo in assisting online censorship in oppressive regimes. Nicholas Kristof in his blog on the New York Times discovers how shocking this situation has become. Lesson for the day; never trust the word of corporate executives (especially when…
”˜Anti-Zionist’ Jew: author of ”˜My Israel Question’ heads for Bali
The following article by Katrin Figge is published today in one of Indonesia’s largest English newspapers, The Jakarta Globe: For a person who gets hate mail and death threats on a regular basis, Antony Loewenstein remains surprisingly cheerful. The Jewish-Australian journalist, activist, blogger and author, who is based in Sydney, has stirred up plenty of…
Nokia should be far more careful
We reported some time ago on the complicity of Nokia in the recent Iranian crackdown. Western multinationals have become pretty good at working with authoritarian regimes (witness Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft in China.) But now a backlash: The mobile phone company Nokia is being hit by a growing economic boycott in Iran as consumers sympathetic…
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…
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…