We’ve seen it coming. And It’s here now, the end of internet privacy for Australia. The reason is that a mandatory data retention scheme has come into effect today, April 13, 2017. This law requires internet service providers to retain customer metadata when customers use the internet. This metadata can include internet usage statistics, traffic, […]
Chongqing is a sprawling city in southwestern China with a population of almost 50 million. Recent news indicates that a new VPN ban could be fast approaching direct from the Chinese government. Chongqing could be a testing ground for a nationwide blockade against users trying to use VPNs to scale/circumvent firewall and internet restrictions in […]
2017 doesn’t look to be a good for internet privacy in India. Just recently, the Indian government has outlined plans for their new mass online surveillance project, the Centralized Monitoring System, and it will go live during the first quarter of 2017. What is the Centralized Monitoring System? The Centralized Monitoring System is a process […]
Censorship in Russia, Turkey, Iran–and of course China, has been getting worse and worse. ISPs in these countries are government controlled which means they can easily block websites for the users that use internet in the countries. Popular websites like Facebook, Google, Wikipedia, and other social networking services as well as messaging apps are frequently […]
2016 in a lot of ways, wasn’t the best year for un-restricted Internet access. We covered numerous cases in which big governments tried to silence free speech through web censorship and regulation. But how did Internet freedom in 2016 rank on a global scale? Perhaps most importantly is the global impact of each year, and […]
Once again, Turkey has blocked major social media websites in an effort to quell public speech after a major public issue. This time it’s the assassination of the Russian Ambassador for Turkey, Andrei Karlov. People in Turkey were unable to access Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp the day after the attack. Turkey Blocks, a website that […]
Signal, one of the world’s leading encrypted messaging apps created by Open Whisper Systems, and a favorite of Edward Snowden, has now been blocked in Egypt. The company’s twitter account reported that “everything is functioning normally on our end, so something might be up on the local networks in Egypt.” Open Whisper Systems investigated the […]
Two-thirds of the planet currently lives under intense government internet censorship according to a report from Freedom House. That means that more than 2 billion people have limited internet access. And the worst part is, the number of restricted users keeps going up as more and more countries are tightening their hold on how the […]
If you’re in the UK, you should be starting to get very worried about the Investigatory Powers Bill, also known as the “Snoopers Charter.” A final reading of the bill took place on October 31st–Halloween, and after a few potential amendments, the bill will be granted Royal Assent soon–shortly becoming law in the UK. In […]
Surprising no one, China is passing yet another internet censorship bill that will prohibit criticism of the government. Of course, any attempt to discuss what could be wrong with the government is a “terrorist attack” that disrupts economic, social, and political order. Unfortunately, the bill has already been approved by the National People’s Congress Standing […]
