Threats to the Open Net: September 9, 2011

By: Matt Lavigueur on 9 September 2011
Posted in China, Iran, South Korea, Russia, Asia, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Data retention, Geolocational Filtering, Threats to the Open Net

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* Nearly 300,000 Iranian IP addresses have likely been compromised after attempting to access google.com using a rogue certificate issued by Dutch digital certificate authority DigiNotar. Personal data from these IP addresses was likely compromised.

* In a speech this past week, Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin, spoke out in favor of Internet freedom, stating, "One can always impose control, but the question is ...whether the state has the right to interfere." Some feel that this may be an attempt to ease fears that the Russian government may soon try to expand its control over online content.

*Chinese regulators have renewed a key license for Google, suggesting that the state has accepted Google's current workaround Chinese censorship. The Internet giant's site Google.cn currently redirects to a website in Hong Kong whose search results Google does not censor.

* A blog managed by Professor K.S. Park, a member of South Korea's Internet content regulatory board, is censored after K.S. Park published posts discussing issues involving online censorship.