privacy, labelling, filtering...

[David Goldstein <goldstein_david@yahoo.com.au>]

Hi all

A few stories I came across today that will possibly be of interest,
excerpts of which are below, and click on the links if you want more.

Cheers
David

An international comparative study of consumer privacy on the
Internet. See
http://www.consumersinternational.org/news/pressreleases/fprivreport.pdf
for the report in pdf format by Consumers International.

******************
The Great Firewall
 "Mao Zedong said that to have power you need two things: the gun and
the pen ... The Communist Party has the gun, but the Internet is now
the pen. If they lose control of it, something will happen to
challenge their authority." --Guo Liang, Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, Beijing, in an interview with CPJ.

On June 3, 2000, police in Chengdu arrested the founder of China's
first human-rights Web site, www.6-4tianwang.com. Huang Qi was
accused of "subverting state power," a charge that could land him in
jail for ten years. Seconds before his arrest, Huang posted a final
bulletin to his site. "There is a long way in front of us," he wrote.
"Thank you all, thanks to everybody devoted to democracy of China.
They are here now (the policemen), so long."

Earlier, Beijing authorities had commended Huang after his Web site
helped find thousands of women who had been abducted in rural China
and sold into marriage. More controversially, the site criticized the
Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, when the Chinese army
opened fire on pro-democracy demonstrators in central Beijing. Huang
also exposed a racket that was forcing Chinese fishermen to undergo
appendectomies, apparently so that local officials could make money
from the surgery.

Huang is one of seven people arrested for Internet-related "crimes"
in China since 1998. He was still in jail at the end of 2000, but
supporters quickly copied his site to a U.S. server, and its content
remained accessible from China in early January. Even so, such
arrests have a deterrent effect. "You don't have to arrest too many
people before everyone gets the message," said an American newspaper
correspondent in Beijing. "The government here is very good at
intimidation."

See http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2001/China_jan01/China_jan01.html

*******************

Joint Statement Opposing Legislative Requirements for School and
Library Internet Blocking Technologies 

 
With the United States Congress' passage of legislation requiring the
use of Internet blocking technologies in all public schools and
libraries participating in certain federal programs, it has become
clear that these schools and libraries are facing a variety of
challenges. 
The following individuals and organizations oppose mandatory Internet
blocking technology requirements in public schools and libraries
because blocking technologies: 
See http://www.onlinepolicy.org/network/statement.htm.

*******************

Vorderman attacks Net industry for porn apathy
By Richard Barry 
In an unprecedented attack on the apathy of the government and the
Internet industry, TV broadcaster Carol Vorderman lambasted both for
failing to protect children from paedophiles operating online
Tuesday. 
At a heated debate of the Internet Watch Foundation's (IWF) first
parliamentary meeting in the House of Lords, Vorderman stunned the
audience with her comments. 

See http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010123/152/axm6v.html

*******************

Minister tells industry to protect children using chat rooms 

New ways to stop internet chat rooms being used by child sex abusers
to meet and "groom" children are being considered, the Home Office
minister, Lord Bassam, said yesterday. 
Measures include the improved supervision of chat rooms and
"hotlines" so that children could make an official report when they
felt they had been the target of an "inappropriate" approach. 
The proposals follow talks between the internet industry, police and
the government. Addressing an Internet Watch Foundation seminar
yesterday, Lord Bassam said that there was a difficulty in outlawing
the early stages of contact between a potential abuser and a child. 

See
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,427218,00.html

*******************

Conference on the evaluation of the ICANN process
On April 6, 2001 the Bertelsmann Foundation and the Friedrich Ebert
Foundation will present an international conference entitled
"Internet Governance - Who controls the Internet?", which will
discuss expert analyses and recommendations on future-viable
regulatory models concerning structure and content of the internet.
Conference participation is by invitation only. 

See http://www.democratic-internet.de/Berlin2001/e_main.html

=====
David Goldstein

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email: Goldstein_David@yahoo.com.au
phone: +61 3 9885 0601 (h)
       +61 418 228 605 (mobile)

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