Censorship

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is supposedly working with officials in Saudi Arabia to make sure that BlackBerry users don't lose access to mobile e-mail, several news agencies reported Friday.

Government officials in Saudi Arabia announced earlier this week that they were ordering the country's three wireless operators to block BlackBerry messenger service. Officials said RIM's stringent security does not comply with policies of Saudi Arabia and presented a security risk.

BlackBerry Messenger service was expected to stop on Friday. So far, the Saudi telecommunications regulator, known as the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), has not … Read more

The U.S. and Canadian governments are getting involved with a dispute between some foreign governments and Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, over those countries' restrictions of the device.

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would try to help broker a resolution between the two sides.

"We are taking time to consult and analyze the full range of interests and issues at stake because we know that there is a legitimate security concern, but there's also a legitimate right of free use and access," The Wall Street Journal reported … Read more

The U.S. Defense Department on Thursday formally demanded that Wikileaks return all military records that it possesses, saying they are the "property of the U.S. government."

Geoff Morrell, the department's press secretary, said the military "demands that Wikileaks return immediately to the U.S. government all versions of documents obtained directly or indirectly from the Department of Defense databases or records" and permanently delete them.

In addition, Morrell said, the Wikileaks.org Web site "constitutes a brazen solicitation to U.S. government officials, including our military, to break the law" by … Read more

A Republican congressman who's a member of the House Intelligence Committee lashed out at Wikileaks this week, saying the Web site's alleged source should be executed for treason.

Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan told a local radio station on Monday (MP3 audio) that he believes that Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist who is suspected of being a source for the document-sharing Web site, should be charged with treason.

When the WHMI interviewer suggested that treason in war is a capital crime, Rogers replied: "Yes, and I would have absolutely, I would support it 100 percent. He … Read more

A new Google Q&A page hosted in Hong Kong and directed toward China was reportedly inaccessible to Chinese users on Tuesday.

Many users in mainland China reported receiving error messages when trying to view the page, according to Reuters. A Google representative told Reuters that there were no technical problems with the page and suggested contacting the Chinese government.

Launched in late July, the beta of the new Q&A page invites Chinese users to ask questions and receive links to Web pages with possible answers. But apparently some of the questions may have triggered concerns within … Read more

The White House on Monday condemned Wikileaks' decision to release more than 75,000 secret military reports from Afghanistan, calling the move "alarming" and saying there is an investigation into how the documents were obtained.

Wikileaks gave the documents in advance to The New York Times, Germany's Der Spiegel, and the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, which independently confirmed their authenticity. The Guardian called the disclosure a "devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan," saying it reveals how the United States-led coalition has killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have risen, … Read more

Google's resolution of its Net presence in China seems to have reached a stable point, at least for the time being.

A Chinese government official said Tuesday the country is satisfied with Google's resolution of how to balance a presence in China with censorship requirements.

"Google agreed...that it will respect China's laws and regulations," Zhang Feng, an official with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, told members of the press, according to an Agence France-Presse report. "That is to say, it will not provide any information that will endanger China's … Read more

NEW YORK CITY--A Wikileaks editor, deciding not to risk a confrontation with federal agents, skipped a high-profile speaking engagement at a hacker conference here on Saturday.

Instead, Jacob Appelbaum, a Seattle-based programmer for the Tor Project, who's involved in the Wikileaks Web site, took over the 1 p.m. ET keynote slot on behalf of co-founder Julian Assange.

Appelbaum used the opportunity to exhort a largely sympathetic audience to support Wikileaks by volunteering or by donating money, to address recent criticisms of the document-publishing Web site, and to boast that Wikileaks remains uncensorable. "You can try to take … Read more

NEW YORK CITY--Federal agents appeared at a hacker conference Friday morning looking for Julian Assange, the controversial figure who has become the public face of Wikileaks, an organizer said.

Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 Magazine and organizer of The Next HOPE conference in midtown Manhattan, said five Homeland Security agents appeared at the conference a day before Wikileaks Editor in Chief Assange was scheduled to speak.

The conference program lists Assange--who has been at the center of a maelstrom of positive and negative publicity relating to the arrest of a U.S. serviceman and videos the serviceman may have provided … Read more