My Way News - China paper censored for Tiananmen photo
AP reports: "Within hours of Thursday's publication, the photos and article were removed from the newspaper's Web site. Authorities also ordered issues of Thursday's newspaper recalled from newsstands, Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper reported Friday."

Ahead of Olympics, Congressman Pushes 'Global Online Freedom Act' - Wired.com
Threat Level reports: "Republican congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey used a meeting with international human rights group Reporters Without Borders last week to lobby for passage of a bill aimed at curtailing U.S. tech companies' participation in foreign countries' internet censorship schemes. Smith is hoping that the bill reaches the floor of the house and passes before the Olympics begin in August."

Comment: I've always felt it was indefensible for American companies birthed in freedom and liberty to sell technology to be used for oppression.

My Way News - FCC chief says Comcast violated Internet rules
AP reports: "The head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday he will recommend that the nation's largest cable company be punished for violating agency principles that guarantee customers open access to the Internet. [...] Comcast has 'arbitrarily' blocked Internet access, regardless of the level of traffic, and failed to disclose to consumers that it was doing so."

U.N. scheme to make Christians criminals:
WND reports "'The 'defamation of religion' resolutions establish as the primary focus and concern the protection of ideas and religions generally, rather than protecting the rights of individuals to practice their religion, which is the chief purpose of international religious freedom law.' 'Furthermore, 'defamation of religion' replaces the existing objective criterion of limitations on speech where there is an intent to incite hatred or violence against religious believers with a subjective criterion that considers whether the religion or its believers feel offended by the speech,' the group continued."

Comment: Basically this is an approach to prevent missionary activity, to stop people from sharing their religion with the intent of winning converts. It "protects" one religion from another religion, it doesn't protect religious freedom, at least not in the way we understand that in the West.

My Way News - Ways consumers can safeguard personal data on Web
AP reports: "Your privacy protections may disappear with a court order or subpoena, but there are steps that privacy activists suggest you take to reduce your exposure."

Comment: This AP report gives four tips on protecting your privacy on-line. I'd like to re-post the whole thing (because it's so short), but that would probably be a violation of copyright, so read it before AP removes it and it becomes a dead link. Their best recommendation: use anonymizing software like Tor to avoid leaving tracks on the net. We gave very little privacy left anymore, we need to jealously guard the little we have left. And, of course, for our brothers and sisters in Christ who are living in repressive countries this issue goes far beyond consumer privacy, it can literally be a matter of life and death.

My Way News - Rights like free speech don't always extend online
AP reports: "Meanwhile, in response to complaints it would not specify, Network Solutions LLC decided to suspend a Web hosting account that Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders was using to promote a movie that criticizes the Quran - before the movie was even posted and without the company finding any actual violation of its rules."

Comment: Think about this for a minute, before "offending" content could even be posted on a website, the provider suspended the account. There were no TOS violations, it was an act of preemptive censorship. I wonder if this would have happened if the religion that might have been offended had been any other religion than that "religion of peace," whose followers take it upon themselves to riot whenever there is a perceived slight.

Indonesia apologises for YouTube blockade - Yahoo! News
AFP reports: "Indonesia ended its blockade of websites carrying a controversial anti-Islam film and apologised to the public on Friday after a string of angry complaints and accusations of censorship."

My Way News - China Orders Video Web Sites to Close
AP reports: "The government announced in December that all video-sharing sites had to be state-owned. [...] Chinese Web surfers have recently been blocked from seeing YouTube after video about the Tibet protests appeared on the popular U.S. site. Foreign Web sites run by news organizations and human rights groups are regularly blocked when they carry sensitive information."

My Way News - Bush Presses House for Surveillance Bill
AP reports: "President Bush said Monday that telecommunications companies should be thanked, not sued, for helping the government conduct warrantless wiretapping in the U.S. after the Sept. 11 attacks."

Congress worries that .gov monitoring will spy on Americans | Tech news blog - CNET News.com
CNET News reports: "A new Bush administration plan to capture and analyze traffic on all federal government networks in real time is generating privacy worries from congressional Democrats and Republicans alike."

My Way News - Pakistan Causes Worldwide YouTube Outage
AP reports: "On Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered 70 Internet service providers to block access to YouTube.com, because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc."

Comment: It's scary that a country with a religious and ideological agenda can disrupt global internet service. Think about this: an Islamic country seeking to prevent people from watching anti-Islamic movies on a video-sharing site has the power to prevent you from watching those movies...even if you are not in that country. What's to prevent them from targeting pro-Christian movies?

My Way News - Encrypted Laptop Poses Legal Dilemma
AP reports: "Tien, the attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said a person's right to keep a password secret is a linchpin of the digital age. Encryption is 'really the only way you can secure information against prying eyes,' he said. 'If it's too easy to compel people to produce their crypto keys, it's not much of a protection.'"

My Way News - China Steps Up Internet Video Control
AP reports: "The rules are aimed at expanding a Chinese censorship system that tries to block Internet use to spread dissent while promoting it for business and education. Communist leaders are especially anxious about unflattering video showing up online ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August, a major prestige project."

My Way News - Access to YouTube Resumes in Turkey
AP reports: "Access to the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube resumed on Thursday, six days after a court ordered it blocked because of clips allegedly insulting the country's founding father."

My Way News - Turkey Bans YouTube for Second Time
AP reports: "A Turkish court has again blocked access to the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube because of clips allegedly insulting the country's founding father, according to reports Sunday."

My Way News - UK Says It Wants to Tackle Net Terror
AP reports: "But Internet service providers and experts say they could be accused of corporate censorship and face a mess of lawsuits if they must carry out any government order to aggressively police the Internet."

My Way News - China Limits Providers of Internet Video
AP reports: "China has moved to restrict videos online, allowing only state-controlled sites to post any - including those shared by users - and requiring Internet providers to delete and report a variety of content."

My Way News - Ask.com to Unveil New Privacy Control
AP reports: "Hoping to establish itself as the Internet's least intrusive search engine, Ask.com is empowering people to prevent their search requests from being deposited in data banks. The new privacy control, called "AskEraser," is scheduled to be unveiled Tuesday. When it's turned on, the safeguard purges a user's search requests from Ask.com's computers within a few hours."

For those of you looking to practice safe searching, this may be a good tool.

Syria blocks access to Facebook - Yahoo! News
AP reports: "Syrian authorities have blocked Facebook, the popular Internet hangout, over what seems to be fears of Israeli 'infiltration' of Syrian social networks on the Net, according to residents and media reports."

My Way News - Video Web Site Gets Religion

AP reports: "GodTube.com, a video-sharing site with Christian content, drew more than 4 million unique visitors during October. It maintains more than 150,000 registered users with active profiles. Plans for the future include producing entertainment programs at the site's headquarters north of Dallas."