China rediscovers censorship

The paper edition of International Herald Tribune reported yesterday that the Chinese goverment have tightened control over what the newsmedia is allowed to report from China.

The new measures that was announced sunday and is effective immediately requires all newsmedia in China to submit all news, photos and "other services" solely trough the Chinese goverment newsagency Xinhua.

With the introduction of Internet the information system has boomed in China, also the opening up of markets to foreign competitors under the defrosting of communist China has also made the future for the ruling communist party very uncertain. In a bid to retain power the Chinese goverment has forbidden bloggers to write without first being registered, they also monitor internet traffic with the help of Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo and Google but there was still one outlet left, mainstream media, the media reported "sudden" news such as protests in Chinas rural regions, dissatisfaction and other disturbances can not be reported if the communists want to stay in power so we see a natural move towards retaining the power of information.

If the power of information slips out of the hands of any totalitarian goverment then their time is at a near end. This is why we can see that almost no foreign newspapers are distributed in China, no cabel tv is allowed (almost) and the restrictions on Internet and now on newsagencies.

For example news that are banned in China include information that may "endanger China's national security, reputation and interests" violate "religious policies or promote evil cults or superstition"
I guess we all now what the evil cult is....

Sincerely
Mr Silence Dogood

German police raids the TOR network

The German police has raided some of the German TOR providers, if you are unfamiliar with TOR it's a anonymizing tool for surfing and communicating on the Internet.

German police claims that these TOR networks been used for child pornography and they therefor raided them, true or not I find it quite discomforting that the police now turn to shut down open source anonymizing services, I believe that in this day and age it is actually necessary for us to have these tools in order to protect ourselves from the goverment.

A goverment that day by day takes over more and more of our daily lives and monitors us more and more, the worst part is that it is all being done under the pretence of keeping us safe, or keeping our children safe. By declaring this they try to make it hard for us that believes in liberties to attack the behaviour we are categorized as terrorists or child molesters and the silent majority goes on living thinking this doesn't concern them, but it does!

If we don't stop the goverments now then the comic book Vigilante will not be so funny, it will not be far from the truth, I don't want to go down that path, do you?

Sincerely
Mr Silence Dogood