Where Google Still Censors
Google's promise to end its self-censorship in China, a daring response to a Chinese cyber attack, may have brought the shine back to the search giant's "Don't Be Evil" ethos. But Google is still blocking certain content in other countries at the demand of their governments. The company won't comment on whether it plans to change those censorship schemes.
India: To abide by obscenity laws, Google strips out certain pornographic results from its Indian search pages. It has also removed content from the Indian version of its social networking site, Orkut, that's deemed by the government to be politically incendiary, like one group representing the Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena.
France and Germany: Their strict ban on hate speech extends to the Web. Google obliges them by blocking search results for extremist groups like the neo-Nazi group Stormfront and the Holocaust denial association AAARGH.
Thailand: Lèse-majesté, or insulting the king, is a serious crime in Thailand. Hence Google's agreement to block Thai users from viewing videos on YouTube (owned by Google) that mocked king Bhumibol Adulyadej, including one that showed him with feet on his head, a symbol of degradation to Thai Buddhists.
Turkey: Google has kowtowed to Turkish government demands that it block a handful of YouTube videos that portrayed Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the revered founder of the country, as a homosexual. Turkey has banned YouTube anyway for the past two years in an attempt to persuade Google to remove the Atatürk clips from global distribution.
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Google's promise to end its
Google's promise to end its self-censorship in China...
Google is merely pushing to put actual agency for censorship "back where it belongs", with the Chinese government. It is doing so primarily for marketing reasons, as is pointed out here, to repolish its image.
Given that the cracking attempt on Googles services in China is now said to have been an inside job, Google is considering whether it needs a physical presence in China. It probably does not. Its virtual presence in China is larger and will continue to grow whether it remains in China or not. If the Chinese government and Google's own employees in China are working in concert against the company then it certainly is in Google's interest to leave the country... and to try to spin its decision into positive PR on the way out the door.
Or to use its threat of exit on its virtual white horse to goad the Chinese government into the realization that it needs to "co-operate" with Google on citizen oppression, just as the US government does. This PR theater is taking place right after Eric Schmidt's tête à tête with Hillary Clinton and her gang of miscreants from the US State Department.
Speaking once again on
Speaking once again on government spying on TOT internet customers :
I recently moved, got a new phone line, and my internet packets initially dropped back to "only" 2 TOT diversions.
118.174.231.253.adsl.dynamic.totbb.net, and
118.174.236.53.adsl.dynamic.totbb.net
As you can see all my traffic is now being routed through 4 (!) of TOT's adsl "customers' premise equipment". Hops 4-7 above. I urge all of you to run
traceroute prachatai.com (linux, mac), or
tracert prachatai.com (windows)
in a terminal window to see if you, too, are being spied upon.
Old-timers in the states
Old-timers in the states during the McCarthy era used not to pay their phone bills once they realized they'd been tapped. The US government promptly picked up their phone bills in order to keep the taps in place!
Perhaps I should stop paying my bill and see if the Thai government pays mine for me :)
The freedom of speech is so
The freedom of speech is so encouraged in Thailand, as long as you don't criticize the power-that-bes. LOL.
JFL: I'm also with TOT and my
JFL: I'm also with TOT and my trace is exactly the same as yours from numbers 4 through 17.
I feel extremely flattered to be classified in the same risk group as you:)
It's good to hear from
It's good to hear from someone else on this.
My reasoning goes as follows :
I conclude that the TOT and the Thai government are colluding to spy on me. And you. And... on who else?
If you run MS Windows open a DOS command window and type
C:\> tracert prachatai.com
at the DOS prompt.
Watch the output. Look for adsl.dynamic.your_isp.net addresses popping up after your packets have left your own little router.
If you run *nix or a mac try
~$ traceroute prachatai.com
in a terminal window. Have a look for the same output.
It is a much better idea for us to share knowledge of our compromised communications than to suffer in "guilty" silence.
We are blameless. The guilt lies with the illegal wiretappers, the interlopers, the not-too-sneaky thieves of information and privacy, certainly not with ourselves.
It is good for us to raise our voices against them, whether they be the Peoples' Republic of China, the Royal Thai Government, the alphabet agencies of the United States Government, or corporate criminals like TOT or Google acting in their own perceived interests or in collusion with authoritarian government entities.
It is good to look them in the eye and let them know that we know what they are doing, that their crimes are common knowledge, that they are damaging, have irreperably damaged, their own perceived interests with their aggressive, criminal behavior.