The United States government is set to donate 1.5 million dollars to a Falun Gong affiliated Internet freedom organization, Global Internet Freedom Consortium (CIFG), a recent story on the BBC has claimed. CIFG provides free technologies to people living within Internet repressing states, allowing users to circumnavigate censor code and access outlawed sites.
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China has long been at odds with the Falun Gong religious movement, whose pages are routinely banned in China for ‘seditious’ content, and the report is part of a larger ongoing row between the PRC and idea of a politically free Internet. Google recently pulled out of China due to privacy and hacking concerns after the Peoples Republic of China was accused of infiltrating the search engine to gain access to Human Rights groups working in China. While all governments reserve the right to restrict access to undesirable Internet webpages, few cast the net as widely as the PRC.
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The US ‘donation’ is about as coincidental as drunk driving and a car wreck, and is a not-so-subtle statement about leading global opinion on China’s firewall. The GIFC is a very interesting website with an assortment of resources and articles about Internet freedom groups in states that restrict access to the net. Have a look at the GIFC website and give us your thoughts on the matter.
People said…