“The type of steps taken by the UAE are going to become more common in the future as governments struggle to gain control of cyberspace for national security reasons,” said Ronald Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

“Just like Google has had to grapple with the pressures of China and other countries who censor search engines, RIM will find itself the centre of pressures from governments eager to tap encrypted mobile data streams.”

From The Globe and Mail

“As of this writing, numerous major American and European news outlets are reporting that Google is blocked in China, based on the information appearing on Google’s Mainland China service availability page.

However no journalist has actually confirmed with a human being at Google that this information is correct. What’s more, I’ve heard from several dozen people all over China who say that Google isn’t blocked for them when they access it on their Internet connections from Beijing to Shanghai to Sichuan to Hunan.

I have yet to hear from a single person who can’t access Google search in Mainland China. I am collecting people’s responses via Twitter here. Also see the #googlecn tag. For a sampling see here, here, here, here, and here.

The most insane part of this whole non-story is that Google’s stock fell 1.4 percent and Baidu’s stock rose 3.5 percent. What’s even funnier are all the financial analysts who commented to Reuters about the block…funny that is if you don’t own Google stock…”

From RConversation

ATTENTION ALL POL108 2009-2010 STUDENTS!
POL108 Internship 2010: Call for Applicants

Did you excel in POL108 this year? Are you looking to apply your knowledge this summer?

We are pleased to announce the POL108 Internship 2010. The POL108 internship is awarded on an annual basis to an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto who successfully completes Pol108Y: Global Networks.

Application details here from POL108 website.

Nart Villeneuve and Ron Deibert are interviewed in a video regarding “the tensions now involved in doing business with China.”

The New York Times covered the newest report released by the Citizen Lab, Shadows in the Cloud.

Google’s announcement Tuesday that it might pull out of the Chinese market has cast a sharp focus on long-standing accusations about the shadowy world of Chinese hackers. Since at least 2002, human rights activists have accused the Chinese government and military of infiltrating their computers as well as those maintained by private companies and nongovernmental… Read more »

Google’s fight with Chinese censors risks escalating into a fullblown US-China showdown over cyber warfare, as claims emerge about the unprecedented scale of Chinese attacks on US commercial and defence systems. The Chinese-originated attack on Gmail accounts of human rights activists, which Google said had partly prompted its threat to leave China, was “probably insignificant”… Read more »

By refusing to accept China’s censorship for its Internet search engine, Google has sent a message to the authoritarian state and its 300 million Internet users. The hidden cost of doing business may be to sell out the values on which the business depends. It took courage for Google to refuse to pay that price and take on China so publicly, by threatening to pull out if limits on the search engine persist.

Well-known human rights advocates in China and a Tibetan rights activist in the United States have disclosed that their Gmail accounts have been compromised. They came forward after Google’s announcement of a sustained cyber attack on activists and other illicit accessing of accounts, but stressed that the problem goes back much further. Some in China… Read more »

Nart Villeneuve spoke about Google’s new approach in China with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC’s Q on January 14, 2010. Download the postcast here at CBC