Left to chance

• When the Internet helped foster nationwide protests in Iran, EFF published a new international edition of our Surveillance Self-Defense guide, explaining how dissidents could avoid government eavesdropping and censorship.
• Google’s new Book Search service will track everything you read, creating a dossier that’s ripe for abusive government demands. EFF rallied authors, publishers, and users together to insist that Google tell the government: “Come back with a warrant.”
• Did you know that your cell phone tells people where you are? EFF published a paper outlining new risks to your location privacy and advising technologists on how to fix them.
• Advertisers are finding new and sneaky ways to track your every move online and to create profiles of your personal interests. EFF is pushing Congress to stop them.

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Original article at EFF.org

stavros-59 writes “Australia’s internet censorship watchdog, ACMA, uses an internet classification system originally intended for children’s PC filters. ACMA has now made what must be the most amazing recent decisions of the whole bizarre censorship debate. The Register today has a story about ACMA’s decision to force Apple to withdraw their ITMS gift feature from Australia on the basis that MA+ (over 15 and maybe sex) rated movies could not be given to children using the gift cards. The films are also banned on the internet but not at local video/DVD stores as detailed in this Whirlpool Forum post. At the same time, the photographic work of Robert Mapplethorpe (not for the fainthearted) has been classified as PG (Parental Guidance) by the Classification Board — which is not part of ACMA, but an agency under the Attorney General’s Department.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes “China’s controversial Green Dam Internet Filter died on new PCs a month ago but it wasn’t until recently that Chinese schools silently removed it. Claims that the software inhibited work in schools was cited as the reason by Reuters. “We will remove all Green Dam software from computers in the school as it has strong conflicts with teaching software we need for normal work,” said one school while another claimed ‘It had seriously influenced our normal work.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

UPDATE: AT&T have responded “Officially, AT&T claims that the act of censorship was the result of a simple mistake made by the content monitor”

“The editing of the Pearl Jam performance on Sunday night was not intended, but rather a mistake by a webcast vendor and contrary to our policy. We have policies in place with respect to editing excessive profanity, but AT&T does not edit or censor performances. We have that policy in place because the blue room is not age-restricted. We regret the mistake and are trying to work with the band to post the song in its entirety.”

A bit of heavy-handed censorship of a Pearl Jam concert by AT&T this weekend led the band to fire off an open letter to fans—a letter in which Pearl Jam railed against media and ISP consolidation and called for readers to support network neutrality. During a recent show by Pearl Jam, they played, “…the melody from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” and Eddie Vedder served up a pair of anti-Bush lyrics to the tune. “George Bush, leave this world alone,” he sang. “George Bush, find yourself another home.” which AT&T censored on the webcast of the concert. PJ were obviously unhappy, and made a bid to support net neutrality, something that seems below most people’s radar. From their site:

This, of course, troubles us as artists but also as citizens concerned with the issue of censorship and the increasingly consolidated control of the media. Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of “NetNeutrality.” Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue.

“What happened to us this weekend was a wake-up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band.”

Remember, if only a few big companies own the Internet’s bandwidth, the same sort of censorship could take place on any Internet content. Net neutrality is the only fair option, demand it.