World Website Blocking

Lantern is a network of people working together to defeat internet censorship around the world. Install and share Lantern, our new peer-to-peer censorship circumvention software, to give or get access to people in places where access is censored.

Unfortunately there has been a setback in China, lots of Chinese users of Lantern began posting to social media about how it was no longer working as a proxy web connection for them.

The Lantern team confirmed the problems saying that Lantern fallback servers have been blocked by the Great Firewall in China. The team stated that the network had been infiltrated by the censors. The team is hoping for a comeback after implementing countermeasures against infiltration.

A total of 6,640 websites were blocked for violating the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 and other laws since 2008, the Dewan Rakyat was told yesterday.

Deputy Minister of Multimedia and Communications Datuk Jailani Johari said the websites blocked include fake bank websites and for copyright infringement, pornography and insulting the royal institution.

Up to June, 29 cases are under investigation including websites which insulted the Yang Pertuan Agong, royal institution and the sultans, he said when replying to Datuk Bung Mokhtar Radin (BN-Kinabatangan).

IMDb, the widely used online entertainment news portal, a prominent source of reliable news and box office reports regarding films, television programmes and video games from all over the world, was blocked on 19 November, but the ban was lifted by 22 November.

Netizens believe the ban was enforced to block the movie trailer for The Line of Freedom , a film that highlights the issue of the crises in Balochistan province showing Baloch separatists abducted by Pakistani security agencies without charges in a bid to stamp out rebellion.

Nighat Dad of Digital Rights Foundation (DRF) said:

Our team did a quick survey with the help of tweeters around the country, said Dad. We checked various other movie titles but only Line of Freedom seemed to be blocked on IMDb and several other websites were accessible otherwise.

I didn't even know there was a movie by this title which was giving the government so much heartburn and so I just had to see what was so unsavoury that the government had to block the entire website. This is what happens, when you forcibly close the internet, word gets around and people get curious!

The Line of Freedom is a 2013 UK war thriller by David Whitney.
With Antonio Khela, Mansoor Al-Feeli and Tony Hasnath.

Summary Notes

In 2011, an innocent student was abducted by his country's security forces. After days of interrogation and torture, he was shot and dumped in the desert. But incredibly, he survived. This is his true story, and the story of thousands of his countrymen who have died in a secret and dirty war.

Authorities in Pakistan's southern Sindh province have banned Skype , Whatsapp and Viber in the name of security, triggering angry reactions from numerous users of the instant messaging applications.

The decision to enforce the ban for three months was made at a meeting chaired by Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah. Provincial Information Minister Sharjeel Memon announced said:

Terrorists and criminal elements are using these networks to communicate after the targeted operation was launched (against them).

Sindh's Home Secretary will contact the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority to have these applications banned in the province. According to Memon, the Sindh government would contact the federal government to ensure that illegal SIMs too are shut down.

Pakistan's first gay website has been blocked by the country's internet censors.

Queerpk.com was set up in July to offer support to the gay community. The site's founder told the BBC the ban violated freedom of speech.

Queerpk.com was launched with the slogan Know us, don't hate us and aimed to raise awareness of gay issues and offer advice and sex education to gay, lesbian and transgender people in Pakistan.

Singapore's internet censor will block access to infidelity website AshleyMadison.com following a public 'uproar' over the Canada-based site's plan to offer a local service.

Censors from the Media Development Authority (MDA) said in a statement:.

The Ashley Madison website, however, stands out. It aggressively promotes and facilitates extramarital affairs and has declared that it will specifically target Singaporeans.

Tens of thousands of Singaporeans signed petitions urging the government to block access to Ashley Madison and Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing wrote on his Facebook page that he did not welcome the site to Singapore.

AshleyMadison.com is an online dating and social networking service marketed to people who are already in a relationship. It had planned to launch in Singapore on November 17.

Update: Blocked  by the internet censor

11th November 2013. See article from lubbockonline.com

Singapore's government has blocked access to the popular adultery website Ashley Madison amid a public 'outcry' ahead of the company's planned launch.

The Media Development Authority, which censors the Internet, said in a statement that it has blocked access to the Canada-based website because it is in:

Flagrant disregard of our family values and public morality. We will therefore not allow Ashley Madison to operate in Singapore and have worked with Internet service providers to block access to the site.

Sri Lankan authorities have taken measures to ban websites hosting what they claim to be obscene content and prevent the spread of such materials through the Internet, a government official said.

Director General of Sri Lanka Telecommunication Regulatory Commission Anusha Pelpita said that over 1,000 obscene websites have been banned in Sri Lanka. He further said that the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission had recently banned several pornographic websites produced with Sri Lankans.

Gay dating app Grindr has been censored and blocked in Turkey, reported KAOS G L, the main Turkish LGBT association.

According to an online message displayed when attempting to access Grinder from Turkey, the block has been ordered by the 14th Criminal Court of Istanbul as a as a supposed protection measure.

KAOS GL's lawyer, Hayriye Kara, commented: The court decision is not published online and so we have no access to the  reason for the censorship:

It is most likely related to 'general morality', an ambiguous term used often against trans sex workers.

Zambian authorities should stop blocking access to critical news websites and halt their harassment of journalists accused of working with the websites, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today after reports emerged of widening government obstruction.

Zambia presents itself as a peaceful democracy, yet these attacks on media outlets with which government disagrees are actions that belong to an authoritarian regime, said CPJ's Africa Program Coordinator Sue Valentine. We urge government to talk with editors, journalism academics, and other members of civil society to find a common understanding of the principles of freedom of expression and the right of citizens to access information.

Zambia Reports , a news website launched in February 2012, said domestic access to its site was at first interrupted on July 16. A managing editor of Zambia Reports , who spoke on condition of anonymity fearing retaliation, said mobile phone users and customers of one Internet service provider were still able to access the site at that point. Two days later, on July 18, the site was completely blocked domestically, he said.

The managing editor told CPJ that the staff believed the government was responsible for the blocking. Zambia Reports has been critical of the ruling Patriotic Front that was voted into power in September 2011, ending two decades of dominance by the Movement for Multiparty Democracy.

The editor told CPJ that while the site had a reputation for expressing critical views, the staff had not broken any laws. He added that the site had not received any complaints from the government about its reporting.

On the night of Saturday November 9, Venezuelan President Nicola's Maduro announced publicly his decision to block access foreign currency valuation websites including dolartoday.com, tucadivi.com, lechugaverde.com, dolarparalelo.com, dolarparalelo.org, preciodolar.info and dolarparalelo.tk, all of which track the unofficial price of foreign currency. After foreign currency exchange controls were put into force in the country in 2003, unofficial or black market pricing of foreign currency was declared illegal. Nevertheless, unofficial currency exchanges remain very much a part of the Venezuelan economy.

Last Wednesday, inflation in Venezuela shot above 50%, causing the value of the Bolivar to plummet and prompting the President to accuse currency speculators of waging economic war on the government.

In his television address, Maduro also announced that Conatel, the administrative body responsible for telecommunications, has opened a case against private Internet service providers in the country, for allowing the disclosure of the price of the parallel [black market] dollar. This is just one tactic in what has been termed the economic war : amongst other measures, on Friday, the owners of popular e-commerce websites MercadoLibre.com and TuCarro.com were called to meet with members of the cabinet to establish mechanisms to regulate prices at which users can post items for sale on these sites. The decision has been carried out through the Ministry of Science and Technology, without any administrative procedure.