U.S. Concerned by Australian Internet Filter Plan

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - The United States has raised concerns with Australia about the impact of a proposed Internet filter that would place restrictions on Web content, an official said Monday.

The concerns of Australia's most important security ally further undermine plans that would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies.

"Our main message of course is that we remain committed to advancing the free flow of information which we view as vital to economic prosperity and preserving open societies globally," a U.S. State Department spokesman Michael Tran told The Associated Press by telephone from Washington.

Tran declined to say when or at what level the U.S. State Department raised its concerns with Australia and declined to detail those concerns.

"We don't discuss the details of specific diplomatic exchanges, but I can say that in the context of that ongoing relationship, we have raised our concerns on this matter with Australian officials," he added.

Internet giants Google and Yahoo have condemned the proposal as a heavy-handed measure that could restrict access to legal information.

The plan needs the support of Parliament to become law later this year.

Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy says the filter would block access to sites that include child pornography, sexual violence and detailed instructions in crime or drug use. The list of banned sites could be constantly updated based on public complaints. If adopted into law, the screening system would make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among the world's democracies.

Conroy declined to comment on the U.S. concerns.

"The Australian and U.S. governments liaise regularly on a broad range of issues. It would be inappropriate to discuss the details of these consultations," said his spokeswoman, Suzie Brady.

Some critics of Australia's filter have said it puts the nation in the same censorship league as China.

L.A. Law Firm Reports Cyber Attacks Originating From China

The Wall Street Journal

A Los Angeles-based law firm representing a U.S. company in a $2.2 billion suit against the Chinese government and several global computer makers said Wednesday it has suffered cyber attacks originating in China.

The firm said the attacks are similar to the ones suffered last year by its client Cybersitter LLC, which is claiming that China pirated parts of its Internet filtering software for the controversial Green Dam Youth Escort program.

"It would be a very strange coincidence indeed if the attacks were unrelated to the lawsuit, because our firm does not ordinarily in the course of business experience these kinds of attacks," said Gregory Fayer, an attorney at Gipson Hoffman & Pancione.

The firm said that on Monday evening its attorneys began receiving trojan emails, disguised to appear as emails from other members of the firm, constructed to retrieve data from the company's computers.

Mr. Fayer said the attacks originated from Chinese servers, but the firm is unsure if the attacks are from the private or government actor.

The firm has reported the incident to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating, as well as the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

The firm's announcement came as allegations of cyber attacks from China are rising sharply. Google Inc. on Tuesday threatened to withdraw from China, saying it had discovered massive cyber attacks against itself and numerous other foreign companies that it said emanated from China.

California-based Cybersitter, a maker of parental-control software, alleges thousands of lines of its code were copied by Chinese software developers for the Green Dam software, which was introduced last year in China to filter Internet content on individual computers.

Cybersitter is suing two Chinese software developers and the Chinese government, as well as seven major Asian computer makers for distributing the software along with computers. The suit names Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp., China-based Lenovo Group, and Haier Group, and Taiwan-based Acer Inc., Asustek Computer Inc., and BenQ Corp.

Acer, Lenovo and BenQ last week declined to comment on the suit, but said they are no longer shipping software. Toshiba and Asustek declined to comment. Haier and Sony didn't respond to requests to comment.

In its suit, Cybersitter also complains of a series of attacks on its computer systems. The company said there have thousands of attempts originating in China, at least one originating from a government agency, to gain access to its private servers, which hold all its proprietary code and information.

Cybersitter also said its employees received Trojan e-mails originating in China that were disguised as emails from its other employees.

China says Green Dam is intended to block pornographic and other harmful content, but critics say it also blocks politically sensitive information and is merely an extension of Beijing's Internet censorship system. Last year Beijing initially mandated that the software be installed on all computers in China, but it backed down and made use of the software optional after an outcry from international businesses and Chinese citizens.

Google Tells China It Will End SERP Censorship

Guardian UK

Decision from world's leading search engine comes amid a clampdown on the internet in China over the last year

Google, the world's leading search engine, has thrown down the gauntlet to China by saying it is no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service.

The internet giant said the decision followed a cyber attack it believes was aimed at gathering information on Chinese human rights activists.

The move follows a clampdown on the internet in China over the last year, which has seen sites and social networking services hosted overseas blocked – including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube – and the closure of many sites at home. Chinese authorities ­criticised Google for supplying "vulgar" content in results.

Google acknowledged that the decision "may well mean" the closure of Google.cn and its offices in China.

That is an understatement, given that it had to agree to censor sensitive material – such as details of human rights groups and references to the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 – to launch Google.cn.

Google was in contact with the US state department before its announcement. Spokesman PJ Crowley said: "Every nation has an obligation, regardless of the origin of malicious cyber activities, to keep its part of the network secure.

"That includes China. Every nation should criminalise malicious activities on computer networks."

In a post on the official Google Blog, the company outlined a "highly sophisticated and targeted" attack in December which it believes affected at least 20 other firms: "These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered, combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web, have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.

"We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all."

Hillary Clinton stepped into the debate, urging Beijing to respond to Google's announcement.

The US secretary of state said in a statement: "We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation."

She added: "The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy."

Human Rights Watch praised the decision and urged other firms to follow suit in challenging censorship. "A transnational attack on privacy is chilling, and Google's response sets a great example," said Arvind Ganesan, director of the group's corporations and human rights programme.

Google said the cyber attack originated from China and that its intellectual property was stolen, but that evidence suggested a primary goal was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Two accounts were accessed but Google believed only account information and subject lines were obtained. It is notifying the other targeted companies and working with US authorities.

Its investigation had shown that, separately, the accounts of dozens of US-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appeared to have been routinely accessed by third parties.

The company added that it was sharing the information not just because of the security and human rights implications "but because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech".

Acknowledging the potential consequences, it stressed: "This move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China."

The message, headlined "A New Approach to China" and signed by David Drummond, senior vice-president of corporate development and chief legal officer, said the company launched Google.cn in 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China "outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results".

At the time Google promised to monitor conditions in China and reconsider its approach if necessary.

But Evgeny Morozov, an expert on the political effects of the internet and a Yahoo fellow at Georgetown University, questioned why Google had made the decision after four years.

"They knew pretty well what they were getting into. Now it seems they are playing the innocence card ... It's like they thought they were dealing with the government of Switzerland and suddenly realised it was China," he said.

Morozov said it was hard to see the logical connection between the security of human rights activists and Google's self-censorship, particularly given that the firm had chosen not to comment on whom it believed responsible for the hacking. It had become easier for "pretty much anyone" to launch cyber attacks in the last few years, he added.

He added that it could have been damaging for Google if news of the breach had emerged later and it appeared the company had done nothing.

Google has only a third of the search-engine market in China, which is dominated by the Chinese giant Baidu. Although its revenues have continued to rise, many analysts believed it was finding business hard going. In June Google suffered intensive disruption to search functions and Gmail for over an hour, after authorities told it to scale back search functions.

China has the world's largest internet population.

Rebecca MacKinnon, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre, said her research showed Google had censored less than Baidu. Google's decision "certainly sets an example in terms of a company trying to do what's best for the user and not just whatever increases the profit margins", she added.

Nart Villeneuve, research fellow at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab – which examines the exercise of political power in cyberspace – said the decision to give such a full account of the attacks and link it to human rights issues was unprecedented.

Google's decision to launch the censored service was highly controversial at the time. It was attacked by campaigners and accused of "sickening collaboration" in a Congressional hearing.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry referred the Guardian to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. But an employee at MIIT said it was not responsible for handling the query, because it dealt with only the technical side of internet issues. He added that many other departments dealt with other aspects of internet management, but added that he did not know who the Guardian should contact in this instance.