Reporters Without Borders Fight Web Censorship

eldavojohn writes "Yesterday Reporters Without Borders (RSF) launched a new initiative called 'Anti-Censorship Shelter' that aims to provide shelter for bloggers and Internet journalists in foreign countries who risk persecution or censorship from their local governments. RSF stated, 'At a time when online filtering and surveillance is becoming more and more widespread, we are making an active commitment to an Internet that is unrestricted and accessible to all by providing the victims of censorship with the means of protecting their online information. Never before have there been so many netizens in prison in countries such as China, Vietnam, and Iran for expressing their views freely online. Anonymity is becoming more and more important for those who handle sensitive data.' Working with Xerobank, RSF has a high-speed, devoted VPN that users can connect to that sounds like an onion router. While RSF admitted this masked address service is not foolproof, it's impressive to see an organization proactively seeking out individuals and offering them a digital shelter to protect themselves from a fate similar to that of the estimated 120 imprisoned bloggers around the world."

Comments

Wikileaks anyone?

[stanlyb]

Do you remember the story about the journalist from Wikileaks, and the advise to avoid USA.......What is this if not censorship, in his worst form.

Reporters Without Borders hardly non-partisan

[cusco]

They get a goodly portion of their budget from groups like the American Enterprise Institute, the CIA-funded Democracy Project, and right-wing money conduits like the Olin Family Trust and Richard Mellon Scaife Trust.

That's why they went berserk when Venezuela shut down several radio stations. Never mind that they had been officially notified multiple times over a three month period that they needed to fix their registrations for 1) allowing the registration to expire (sometimes for multiple years), 2) registering in the names of fictional or dead people, or 3) not even using the bandwidth that they were granted and just preventing anyone else from competing in that market. At the same time Venezuela has assisted the poor and middle class to create literally hundreds of 'micro-broadcast stations', low-power radio stations that serve the immediate community's interests.

Somehow RSF never seems to have issues with Palestinian, Turkish and Ukrainian journalists jailed for not toeing the official line.