This Financial Post article reports on a new research paper published by the OpenNet Initiative, which finds that in many majority Muslim countries, control of the Internet is based primarily on interpretations of the religious instructions of the Islamic faith. The author of the article, Helmi Noman, is a Senior Researcher at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto and a Research Affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University. Mr. Noman says that “a number of Internet-specific fatwas (religious decrees) have been layered on top of regulatory boundaries on acceptable use.” For example, fatwas against browsing forbidden websites have resulted in the development of “websites with more palatable content such as NaqaTube.com, which promises users a Sharia-compatible YouTube-like experience.”

In this article, CTV News reports on the role of Western companies in promoting censorship in the Middle East and North Africa. Specifically, it looks at Netsweeper Inc., a Canada-based developer of content filtering software, and its role in providing governments in Qatar, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates with tools to filter online content.

Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, told CTV News that the recent controversy surrounding the Canadian company demonstrates that the Canadian federal government needs to take a clear position on content filtering, and within this, develop a clear foreign policy for cyberspace. For example, Deibert suggests that the Canadian government introduce legislation which makes it “illegal for Canadian companies to filter content in countries that violate the freedoms outlined in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.” In essence, “take a major international treaty of the 20th century, and apply it in a decidedly 21st century context.”

Deibert said that Canada should take on a leadership role on cyber policy “in international forums to spotlight and develop a kind of normative agreement that is consistent with the values we hold as a country.”

For the full article see here.

Dr. Rafal Rohozinski, Senior Scholar at the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and the Citizen Lab, will be testifying before United States Congress on Friday July 15th, 2011 on Internet Freedom in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

For further details see here

“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

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 »

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

The decision by Google to draw a line and threaten to end its business operations in China brought attention to reports of Chinese high-technology espionage stretching back at least a decade. But despite Google’s suggestion that the hacking came from within China, it remained unclear who was responsible. Nevertheless, it presented the Obama administration with… 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… Read more »

Google has just announced that there were successful attacks against their infrastructure resulting in the theft of intellectual property. Google traced the attacks to China and although the attribution regarding the Chinese government is unclear, Google also discovered that the attackers also attempted to compromise the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. From Nart… Read more »