RConversation

links for 2007-07-31

• Citizen Journalism and humanitarian aid: Bane or boon? « ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace)
  "Our challenge is to temper the euphoria and ensure the best of new media and citizen journalism is used to alleviate the continuing suffering of communities embroiled in conflict, or faced with the sudden wrath of nature."
  (tags: newmedia journalism internet blogs citizenmedia humanitarian)
• EastSouthWestNorth: The Corporate Policy for Yahoo! China
  " If freedom of speech on the Chinese Internet is ever to come about, it will not be handed over to them because of U.S. Congressional actions against American corporations. The Chinese people will fight and obtain that freedom for themselves..."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch yahoo! censorship privacy freespeech humanrights)
• Threat Level - Wired Blogs - Yahoo Knew More About China Journalist Subpoena Than It Told Congress It Did - Updated
  "Yahoo spokesman Jim Cullinan says the document does not contradict Callahan's testimony"
  (tags: china yahoo! privacy surveillance csr humanrights freespeech chineseinternetresearch)
• Yahoo Testimony About Imprisoned Reporter Contradicted -- China -- InformationWeek
  "A document from the Beijing State Security Bureau suggests that Yahoo possessed more information than it has admitted to about Chinese journalist Shi Tao."
  (tags: china yahoo! chineseinternetresearch surveillance privacy humanrights freespeech)
• Chinese dissident e-mails: what did Yahoo know, and when did it know it?
  "Did Yahoo lie before Congress? It depends what "no information" means. ...Should Yahoo have been willing to defy the government over a matter on which it had so little information? Not according to Yahoo."
  (tags: yahoo! privacy surveillance china humanrights freespeech chineseinternetresearch)
• BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Networked journalism
  "I think a better term for what I’ve been calling “citizen journalism” might be “networked journalism.”" (a year-old post by Jeff Jarvis, worth revisiting)
  (tags: journalism2.0 web2.0 CitizenJournalism citizenmedia journalism internet newmedia)
• It's Not Citizen Journalism Or Crowdsourcing - It's Just Journalism » Publishing 2.0
  "The future of journalism depends on collaboration, not silos and fiefdoms. Journalism with a capital J needs to maintain standards but it also, desperately, needs to evolve in order to thrive as in a networked media age."
  (tags: journalism newmedia internet citizenmedia CitizenJournalism)
• Wikipedia founder to compete with Google - vnunet.com
  "The new site, due to launch by the end of 2007, will combine human-assisted editing with computer-controlled searches."
  (tags: wikipedia wiki wikia search open opensource google)
• Flickr tour hits Hong Kong at 852signal - Hong Kong Web 2.0
  "Flickr and their community manager, Heather Champ (I’m assuming) will be in town on August 30th...would like to hear some feedback...as to why they’ve been pretty hush hush about the recent events of Oiwan Lam."
  (tags: flickr yahoo! censorship hongkong)

More Yahoo! China documents emerge

More documents have surfaced showing that Yahoo! employees knew that they were handling political cases when they received information requests from Chinese authorities on at least two people now doing serious jailtime.

This is contrary to previous claims by Yahoo! that "we had no information about the nature of the investigation."  Note that Yahoo! insists that it is wrong to say they were lying,  in spite of that statement made to Congress last year which makes it seem like they were.

This week's documents, also courtesy of the DuiHua Foundation, contain new details from the case of Wang Xiaoning, also doing ten years, for "inciting subversion." The folks at Duihua have examined the new documents, judged them to be authentic, and uploaded the originals plus translations here.

Click here for a PDF containing two notices presented to Yahoo! in April and August 2002 by the Beijing State Security Bureau. The notices request account, registration, and login information for a total of three Yahoo! China e-mail addresses, "all of which appear to have been provided on that same day by Yahoo!’s Beijing office," according to DuiHua.

As DuiHua points  out: "Both of the police notices clearly state “suspected inciting subversion” as the cause of the investigation."   So Yahoo! China clearly knew that this was a political case.

Click here for a PDF containing a cover letter from Yahoo!'s Beijing office, plus account information, plus the text of one of 23 pages of e-mails submitted. Here is what the e-mail says:

Notice:

We hereby notify you that because hotmaiil.com's download speed is too slow and other reasons, the Chinese Third Way Party has decided to cease using [email protected] [and] [email protected] and will from now on use [email protected].

Our party has already released four documents:

1. "Follow the third Way, Establish the Third Political Party" (21,692 characters)
2. Chinese Third Way Party: "Ten Proposals for Completing the Great Mission of Unifying China" (5,429 characters)
3. Chinese Third Way Party Recommends an Important Article (Shi Cheng, "Beware the Chinese Communists Fake Political Reforms- Critiquing Pan Yue's "Thoughts on teh Transition from Revolutionary Party to Ruling Party"" (18,261 characters)
4. Message from the Director of the Chinese Third Way Party: "Call on the Left Wing of the Chinese Communist Party to Follow Democracy, Support the Left Wing of the Chinese Communist Party in Establishing an Independent Party" (2,412 characters)

In two days, we will release the Chinese Third Way Party's "Twenty Proposals for Solving China's Extremely Serious Rural Problems (Farmers, Rural Villages, Agriculture)" (12,000 characters).

For that and other such communications, Wang Xiaoning is ten years in the slammer.

It would be interesting to see all the other e-mails in the original Chinese.

Shi Tao's mother has joined Wang Xiaoning's wife in a U.S. lawsuit against Yahoo! for its role in aiding and abetting these men's imprisonment.  Back when the lawsuit was launched I pointed out it's still unclear in Wang Xiaoning's case whether Wang would have gone to jail anyway even without Yahoo!'s assistance, because the Chinese sentencing document cited the search of his computer as one of the major sources of evidence. We still don't know whether the search of his home and computer happened before or after Yahoo! handed over the information. One outstanding question has now been resolved: under what circumstances Yahoo! employees handed over the information. We now know that they did so in response to official written police orders. This article cites the lawsuit's attorney saying that the documents were handed over voluntarily without a court order or subpoena. The new documents prove that claim to be false.

Ars Technica has an article about the last week's documents in which author Nate Anderson points out that, Yahoo!'s obfuscation or lack of clarity or whatever you want to call it aside, "whether the company should have acted differently because of that is a matter for debate."  His piece concludes:

Did Yahoo lie before Congress? It depends what "no information" means. While Yahoo clearly did know that the case was about state secrets (assuming the notice is genuine), the notice offered no other details. Should Yahoo have been willing to defy the government over a matter on which it had so little information? Not according to Yahoo. The company has claimed repeatedly that Chinese Internet users are better off with US companies operating in China, even when that means cooperating with some dodgy censorship practices and the occasional political prosecution, and it has battled shareholder efforts to make it change its ways.

Roland Soong over at EastSouthWestNorth has a long blog post ranting against Yahoo!'s critics for being unrealistic and counter-productive. As he sees it, Yahoo! had three choices: comply (as it did), resist (and likely lose their business license), or pull out of China. While option one is bad, he doesn't think options two and three are useful either. He thinks that "Yahoo! trashing" is a waste of time and won't do much to change things in China given Yahoo!'s paltry market share there. He concludes:

If freedom of speech on the Chinese Internet is ever to come about, it will not be handed over to them because of U.S. Congressional actions against American corporations.  The Chinese people will fight and obtain that freedom for themselves through struggling on local issues.  Those issues may be seemingly trivial, but we are talking about accumulation and aggregation.  The western world can help by focusing on such cases because international attention always helps in the sense that an allegedly rising and proud nation would never want to be caught with exhibiting uncivilized behavior.  The war will not be won by a single nationwide strike.  Instead, this is about the consecutive small victories at the local level.

I agree, freedom of speech will be won by the Chinese internet users themselves. I have always thought that U.S. legislation in response to this problem is a bad idea. However.

I don't think it is meaningless to push companies like Yahoo! to be more mindful of the human rights situations they will face before they decide whether or not to open a particular product or service in any given market. There is a reason Microsoft never introduced a localized Chinese Hotmail and why Google hasn't introduced a local Chinese Gmail. Because they don't want Shi Taos and Wang Xiaonings on their hands. Companies can make choices about how they engage in a market and what services are appropriate given the political situation.

Let me emphasize: this is not about foreigners changing China. Or it isn't for me. This is about how companies interact with governments everywhere and how individual users lose out in the process. Does Yahoo!'s attitude towards its Chinese users say something about its attitude towards American users' privacy?  Should companies be doing a much better job - beyond obscure terms-of-service nobody reads - to educate their users about just how NOT private their info is? Would Wang Xiaoning have decided not to use a yahoo.cn account for his opposition party activities if there had been much clearer information about what jurisdiction his data was going to be in and who had the right to view it?  A lot of people including many company executives think the answer is "yes," which is why Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Vodaphone, and others are sitting round the table with human rights groups to develop global corporate principles for freedom of speech and privacy.

Internet and telecoms companies should handle every government information request anywhere with a mind to the possibility all the documents related to that case could leak one day - or politics could change and secret police archives could suddenly become open to the public. That's one reason I think it's great that these documents have come out. Also, it's always better to have more concrete facts about these cases - facts which, mind you, have proven Yahoo!'s critics not to be 100% right all the time either. 

links for 2007-07-30

• A Blogger Says: Save The MSM!
  "blogs and the msm are symbiotic. Blogs at their best improve on msm reporting both by holding reporters to account and by latching onto complex topics and talking about them in a conversational style that professional reporters just can't match. But the
  (tags: blogs blogging journalism news newmedia)
• BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Networked journalism: Pro-pro
  "There it is: networked, collaborative journalism. You can’t do it all yourself. The story gets better when the story can get bigger. Do what you do best and link to the rest. Bravo."
  (tags: journalism internet newspapers newmedia guardian)

links for 2007-07-29

• Bloomberg.com: Baidu Takes On `Don't Be Evil' Google in China
  "Having dented Baidu's growth, Google may find overtaking its Chinese competitor a tougher challenge. Baidu is unlikely to lose the top spot because it has a closer relationship with the Chinese government..."
  (tags: google baidu search china chineseinternetresearch censorship)

Shi Tao's case: Yahoo! knew more than they claimed

Yahoo! executives say one thing in public, an official Chinese document says something else. Oops.

I just discovered today that the Dui Hua Foundation, which does excellent, low-key work on Chinese human rights issues, has a blog. Last week they posted a full English translation (PDF) of a document that has surfaced recently on the web: the Beijing State Security Bureau's request to Yahoo!'s Beijing office for information about the e-mail account [email protected]. That's the account used by Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who is now doing 10 years in jail for divulging state secrets.

The folks at Dui Hua say they've examined the document and believe it to be authentic. If it is indeed authentic, this document would seem to clear up any lingering questions about whether Yahoo!'s Hong Kong office was involved in handing over Shi Tao's account information.

But it also raises new questions. Here is what the document says (emphasis added):

Beijing State Security Bureau
Notice of Evidence Collection

[2004] BJ State Sec. Ev. Coll. No. 02

Beijing Representative Office, Yahoo! (HK) Holdings Ltd.:

According to investigation, your office is in possession of the following items relating to a case of suspecting illegal provision of state secrets to foreign entities that is currently under investigation by our bureau. In accordance with  Article 45 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC, [these items] may be  collected. The items for collection are:

Email account registration information for [email protected], all  login times, corresponding IP addresses, and relevant email content from February  22, 2004 to present. 

Beijing State Security Bureau (seal)  April 22, 2004

So Yahoo!'s Beijing office was informed from the beginning that this was not an investigation into a potential murderer, thief, child pornographer, or terrorist, but somebody suspected of giving "state secrets" to foreigners. As Dui Hua's Joshua Rosenzweig says: "One does not have to be an expert in Chinese law to know that "state secrets" charges have often been used to punish political dissent in China."

Now here is what Yahoo! General Counsel Michael Callahan told a U.S. Congressional hearing on February 15, 2006 (emphasis added):

The Shi Tao case raises profound and troubling questions about basic human rights.  Nevertheless, it is important to lay out the facts. When Yahoo! China in Beijing was required to provide information about the user, who we later learned was Shi Tao, we had no information about the nature of the investigation.  Indeed, we were unaware of the particular facts surrounding the case until the news story emerged.  Law enforcement agencies in China, the United States, and elsewhere typically do not explain to information technology companies or other businesses why they demand specific information regarding certain individuals.  In many cases, Yahoo! does not know the real identity of individuals for whom governments request information, as very often our users subscribe to our services without using their real names.

Read the full testimony here (PDF). 

Now we know that when Callahan said "we had no information about the nature of the investigation," he was not telling the truth.

What Yahoo! China's employees in Beijing might have done differently without getting themselves in trouble is an open question.

Still, the fact is that Callahan did not tell the truth to Congress. Was he was deliberately lying? Or are Yahoo!'s internal communications and record keeping just so bad that he didn't have full information from the Beijing office?

That makes me wonder: what else did the Beijing office do - or have knowledge of in relation to the case of Shi Tao and others who are now in jail - which Yahoo! execs are keeping mum about... if they even have any idea themselves?

links for 2007-07-27

• From print to Web: The Washington Post goes digital - August 6, 2007
  "Newspapers are dying. At the Washington Post Co., CEO Donald Graham is banking on the Internet to save serious journalism. If he can't figure this out, nobody can."
  (tags: internet media newspapers newmedia business)
• How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life
  "The Internet will eventually be full of such 3-D environments; Second Life might even be one of them. But in the meantime, it's just slurping up corporate dollars and delivering little in return."
  (tags: secondlife virtualworlds business)
• With Tools on Web, Amateurs Reshape Mapmaking - New York Times
  "companies have created the tools that are allowing people with minimal technical skills to do what only professional mapmakers were able to do before."
  (tags: maps tools google yahoo! googlemaps newmedia citizenmedia internet)
• Bad News Tests China's Propaganda Arm - washingtonpost.com
  "President Allows Some Criticism as Officials Scold Reporters Over Negative Stories"
  (tags: china propaganda freespeech journalism news censorship media regulation)
• Report warns against many Internet rules
  "It is important ... that 'governance' must not be allowed to become a code word for government regulation of Internet content"
  (tags: internet censorship freespeech oni europe netgovernance)

Oiwan update: TELA and OAT won't answer her questions

Oiwan Lam's indecency hearing is now likely to take place in September - postponed from August, which is good because it gives Oiwan more time to prepare. (For details and background on her case please click here, here, here, here, and here. Oiwan's personal statement about the case is here.)

Oiwan has been trying to get more information from the Obscene Articles Tribunal so that she can prepare for her hearing with them. On July 17th she wrote them a letter asking the following questions:   

1. Where is the venue of the meeting which did the classification? Who had attended the meeting? Apart from the principal adjudicator and two committee members?
2. How were the two adjudicators designated? Selected by the Registrar of OAT? Rotated according to the committee members’ list? Or by computer random selection?
3. Had there been an actual voting? If there is, what classification is opined by the two adjudicators? What is the opinion of the principal adjudicator? If no voting were made, please describe how the classification was arrived at? For example, was the suggested classification made by any of the three adjudicators and then consented by all? If that was the case, who had suggested the classiication?     .
4. Among the two adjudicators, Mr. 薜國強 and Mr. 黃樂豪, did they express any opinion towards this particular article? If so, what are their opinions? Are there any minutes, written or sound record of that classification meeting? And their opinions?
5. Had the principal adjudicator and the two adjudicators been informed of the fact that the photo is a hyperlink to flickr (an international photo sharing site with its own guideline for indecent material)? And the nature of the website www.inmediahk.net where the artile is published?
6. Had TELA (Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority) or Department of Justice given any remark, comment, legal advice, reference materials, letter of complaint or supporting document when they submitted this particular case to OAT? If so, I should like to know the details of the above documents.

In her letter she also gave the following reason for asking these questions:

The above information is necessary for my preparation of witness statement, expert opinions, submissions, etc. as they directly affect the classification of the article – which can lead to a serious criminal charge. Am looking forward for your reply at your earliest convenience.

Writing on her Facebook page today, Oiwan updates us on the response she received from OAT:

OAT forwarded my letter to TELA, and TELA wrote back to them: "Futher clarifications from the applicant may be needed and the Tribunal may wish to ask the Applicant to indicate the relevance of the questions in relation to the full hearing".

OAT then replied to me in one sentence: "Please tell the Tribunal the relevance of the questions in relation to the full hearing".

Apparently the reason Oiwan gave in her initial letter: "The above information is necessary for my preparation of witness statement, expert opinions, submissions, etc. as they directly affect the classification of the article" - is not enough for them.

links for 2007-07-26

• Online journalism’s must-read blog posts « Online Journalism Blog
  Paul Bradshaw's "list of the essential reads for online journalists"
  (tags: newmedia education journalism journalism2.0 web2.0 blogs wikis tools)
• BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Malaysia cracks down on bloggers
  "The Malaysian government has warned it could use tough anti-terrorism laws against bloggers who insult Islam or the country's king."
  (tags: blogs blogging malaysia freespeech censorship law politics citizenmedia)
• Danwei: How to run a standalone blog, legally
  "What sort of hosting options do you have if you don't want to set up your blog with one of the big Chinese providers?"
  (tags: blogs blogging china chineseinternetresearch law regulation censorship freespeech)
• Social Media: Watching the CNN YouTube debate
  "This combination of grassroots democracy and traditional journalism strikes me as the right balance. "
  (tags: journalism citizenmedia youtube TV video internet politics vote2008 u.s.a.)
• Global Voices Online » China: Blogging summer floods
  "bloggers have been as busy as Nüwa in their citizen reporting of the deadly floods that have devastated many areas in China during this summer’s rainy season."
  (tags: china chineseinternetresearch blogs blogging citizenmedia CitizenJournalism)
• EastSouthWestNorth: Daily Brief Comments July 2007
  Roland translates an InMedia post with info about the remaining books banned by TELA at this year's book fair, including 2 by Muzimei that are on sale at HK bookstores... go figure...
  (tags: hongkong TELA books censorship freespeech)
• » As long as the Internet has been around….and still no secure e-mail? | Berlind’s Testbed | ZDNet.com
  "with any e-mail client, the option to send e-mail securely should exist."
  (tags: e-mail security privacy)

.Asia: New online real estate for the region

New virtual real estate is opening up for sale in Asia, as Edmon Chung, CEO of the new ".Asia" top-level domain, puts it.  .Asia officially launched here in Hong Kong on Wednesday.  They're a non-profit organization whose mission, they say, is "dedicated to the needs of the Pan-Asia and Asia Pacific Internet community... providing an online identity for people, organizations, and businesses who want "to express membership in the larger Asian community."

SFgate has a very detailed article about .Asia and its prospects. They describe a launch process which Edmon says he hopes will become a model for future top-level domains:

...unlike previous TLD launches, DotAsia is setting itself up to take maximum benefit from this opportunity, while forcing a leveling of the domain-registration playing field. Rather than simply opening the floodgates for speculators to register domains -- which makes winning a particular domain a matter of the fastest finger -- they've laid out a unique "sunrise" process for the first six months of their operation. After restricted names are reserved by governments and administrative organizations, valid international trademark holders and companies seeking to protect their operating names will have an open window to submit applications for those respective domains. When conflicts emerge -- the number of companies that can legitimately claim to have rights to names like "Sun" and "Star" in Asia is staggering -- verified stakeholders will have the right to participate in an open, Internet-based auction, designed to ensure that the entity that values the domain most will end up controlling it.

The same application and auction process will be followed for the first 30 days of open registration as well. Want a nifty generic domain name? Be prepared to bid on it. How much is porn.asia worth to you?

Before .Asia opens up in phases to governments, trademark holders, and then the general public, they are seeking applicants for their ".Asia Pioneer" program. The idea is to give out premium domain names to organizations, businesses or projects that will help build a quality and diverse Asian Internet community - rather than just selling everything to first-comers and highest bidders. According to the .Asia Pioneer website:

Breaking the mould of disinterested allocation of domains in a first-come-first-served race, the .Asia Pioneer Domains Program entrusts the most prestigious cyber real estate in .Asia to those who show genuine commitment to this community. The objective of the program is to immediately create active and relevant content on .Asia domains for the benefit of Internet users around the world. The program builds on the value of .Asia to provide a natural name for users to easily navigate and find the information they are looking for. Through the Pioneer Domains Program, DotAsia is giving out millions of dollars worth of domain names.

One journalist had some questions about how transparent this process will be. Edmon insists it will be very transparent. It will be fascinating  to see what comes out of this process.

At the launch party .Asia had these cute napkins (pictured at right) inviting people to scribble their ideas down and help populate Asia's new cyber-real estate. I actually scribbled down an online media idea (which I'm not showing). Unfortunately I don't have time to implement it this year given my other commitments and I certainly don't have the resources...  but maybe somebody else out there might be able to do something with it... 

links for 2007-07-25

• China Media Project:High-level Party leaders respond to cardboard bun controversy/CCTV orders removal of all freelancers
  "Signaling that top Party leaders intend to leverage the recent cardboard bun news controversy to tighten media controls ahead of the 17th National Congress and the Beijing Olympic Games next year..."
  (tags: china journalism)
• Imagethief : Massacre of the freelancers
  "If CCTV is purging anyone, it should be editors who picked up the story and reran it."
  (tags: china journalism)
• Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits - Jinan Floods: China's CitJ Success Story
  "In the light of the many critical assessments of Assignment Zero, it makes sense to point at a highly successful project with citizen journalism, coming from China."
  (tags: china CitizenJournalism citizenmedia journalism QQ tencent newmedia)
• How volunteers can help freedom of information
  "Transparency regulations for business and government will help China’s ailing environment, writes Dongting Lu. But they will not go far enough, unless they incorporate the important work of environmental volunteers."
  (tags: china environment freespeech internet newmedia media journalism)