Overseas FOI travel bug

 I'm not the only Aussie with an FOI interest voyaging forth-according to this post by Alasdair Roberts he and Australian Information Commissioner John McMillan spoke at a forum in Beijing earlier this week entitled "Does Access to Information Really Make Governments More Transparent."  Hopefully the short answer was "yes" but I'm sure there is an interested audience beyond Beijing. Professor McMillan's speech or other details of the discussion are yet to appear on the OAIC website. 

 I'll be back in the middle of next week.

Google releases government requests data

Google's Government Requests Tool  launched on 20 April provides information about requests for user data or content removal received from government agencies or arising from court orders around the world. In the last six months o f last year Australian government agencies made 155 requests for information including 17 for remove all or some information:14 from You Tube, and 1 each from Blogger and Geo and a web search. Google complied fully or partially with 52%. No other details. Has anyone asked Canberra about the requests for user data? Australian numbers for removal are small in comparison to Brazil, Germany, India (many arising from defamation suits) and the US.

Google states the release is a first step in providing more transparency about efforts at web censorship, noting many requests are entirely legitimate for example for removal of child pxxxography.

We also regularly receive requests from law enforcement agencies to hand over private user data. Again, the vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations. However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship

On political speech Google adds:

In our experience over the years a very small percentage of content removal requests from governments have centered on political speech, but often those requests are the ones that spark the most vigorous debate within Google. We have complied with some of those requests if, for instance, the material violated our own content policies. But for others, we didn’t. For example, in Argentina, a federal prosecutor claimed that information about him and his wife (a federal judge) had been posted for analysis on two political blogs and asked that we remove them. We removed a portion of one of the blogs for revealing private information about the judge, but otherwise did not comply. We also received a demand in late 2009 from a Canadian politician for the removal of a blog criticizing his policies. Again, we declined to remove the blog, because it did not violate our policies.

There’s a question mark on the world map for content removal requests from China- Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so Google (who terminated its joint venture there because of government intrusion) politely says it cannot disclose that information at this time.

On a China related topic, my morning read at the moment in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post today reports China shut down all anonymous comments on major news and business websites last year, and plans a real name identification system to prevent anonymous communication on websites, discussion groups and mobile telephones. Wang Chen, chief of the State Council Information Office reportedly told the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress one of the aims was to "keep harmful overseas information" from appearing on domestic websites. Wang is also reported to have said China now has more than 400 million internet users, so the finger in the dyke faces challenging times.

China blocks me!

I'm in Hong Kong this week after 15 days in China (fantastic and all that) where I found that access to Open and Shut is blocked.The thought of Chinese officials beavering away to find me in the blogosphere, making sense of my ramblings and then cutting  access seems a bit bizarre.

Subversive? Moi?

The explanation would have to be that key word blocks are in place for terms like freedom of information, open government, etc. so I'm not taking the ban personally as either a slight or compliment. But if anyone in China is reading, I'd be glad to hear your side of the story.

This blog will resume something close to normal transmission shortly.

Update: Shane McLeod of the ABC tells me there is a blanket block in China on blogs hosted on Blogspot and similar blog sites. This post by John Prandato refers to China's recent attempts to tighten the grip following the departure of Google (I could use Google in China but selective links were blocked):

Earlier this month, China quietly acknowledged the creation of a new “Internet news coordination bureau,” officially responsible for “guidance, coordination and other work related to the construction and management of Web culture.” And just this week, China’s legislature proposed an amendment to the Law on Guarding State Secrets that would require telecommunications companies to “detect, report and delete” leaks of “state secrets,” broadly defined by the government as “information concerning national security and interests that, if released, would harm the country’s security and interests.” These measures are just the latest pieces fastened to a massive regulatory system, much to the chagrin of the international human rights community and many of China’s 400 million Internet users.

Prandato (and McLeod) mention that net savvy locals get around the block problem through virtual private networks, but two weeks enjoying other things there meant I never came close to this solution.