Russian DDOS attacks seem trivial in comparison.
This is something that I take for granted - logging onto Livejournal, or Facebook, or Twitter and writing whatever I'm thinking about.
It may be as simple as minutiae of my daily life, or it may be a youtube clip, or something more contentious, like a rant against the coal seam gas exploration in NSW and QLD and its possible deleterious effects on the water table. It may be a gentle poke at the government, or may simply be cat photos.
But whatever it is, I don't think twice about posting it. I certainly don't consider that it could land me in gaol, as has happened to Pham Minh Hoang in Vietnam. He dared to criticise the government on 33 occasions from 2002 to 2010 and managed to score himself a 3-year gaol term.
And I don't consider for one minute the possibility that LJ or Facebook or Twitter might purge my comments, due to pressure from the government, as happens regularly on Chinese micro-blogging site Sina Weibo. The most recent topic to be censored is the recent fatal train crash near Wenzhou.
"*In the past, Sina Weibo banned only a handful of topics, like Falun Gong, Taiwan independence and Chinese Premier Hu Jintao's bald spot....Even a search for the aforementioned topics would bring up nothing. But more stringent measures in stifling internet dissent demonstrate that the Communist Party is on the offensive, dictating to Sina Weibo that its list of prohibited topics be expanded to anything that might threaten the regime's stranglehold on public discourse."
*from The Epoch Times, Aug 17*
It may be as simple as minutiae of my daily life, or it may be a youtube clip, or something more contentious, like a rant against the coal seam gas exploration in NSW and QLD and its possible deleterious effects on the water table. It may be a gentle poke at the government, or may simply be cat photos.
But whatever it is, I don't think twice about posting it. I certainly don't consider that it could land me in gaol, as has happened to Pham Minh Hoang in Vietnam. He dared to criticise the government on 33 occasions from 2002 to 2010 and managed to score himself a 3-year gaol term.
And I don't consider for one minute the possibility that LJ or Facebook or Twitter might purge my comments, due to pressure from the government, as happens regularly on Chinese micro-blogging site Sina Weibo. The most recent topic to be censored is the recent fatal train crash near Wenzhou.
"*In the past, Sina Weibo banned only a handful of topics, like Falun Gong, Taiwan independence and Chinese Premier Hu Jintao's bald spot....Even a search for the aforementioned topics would bring up nothing. But more stringent measures in stifling internet dissent demonstrate that the Communist Party is on the offensive, dictating to Sina Weibo that its list of prohibited topics be expanded to anything that might threaten the regime's stranglehold on public discourse."
*from The Epoch Times, Aug 17*