We thankfully have confirmation that the Chinese government did not engage in new censorship activity today in regards to Google, and that the dashboard application was simply reading a false positive. Follow the following links for more coverage on the misread:
TechCrunch
TNW
There are unconfirmed reports from Google if censorship has occurred, but it seems as if Google services were rendered inaccessible today in mainland China.
Following the recent controversial showdown between the Chinese government and Google that ended with China renewing Google’s operating license, the possibility of this type of possible retaliation from China caught many off guard. Again, Google has not confirmed if this is merely a technical issues or censorship by the Chinese government, but it has all parties on edge to see what will evolve from the current situation.
Google Mainland China Service Availability
If you are in China and can report on the accessibility of any Google services, please use our reporter or tweet us @herdictreport with “china” “www.google.cn” and either “up” or “down”.
After speculation that whistle blowing site wikileaks.org had fallen to pieces, it bounced back on Sunday releasing over 91,000 documents on the US military operations in Afghanistan and is being re-heralded as the future of investigative journalism and whistle blowing. This position though has brought the site into the line of fire once more from many governments around the world.
We here at Herdict have been keeping a close eye on worldwide accessibility reporting for Wikileaks, and our reports so far show that there has been a definitely spike in inaccessibility for the site. While it is unconfirmed if these are actual government blockages of the content, or if there has simply been server-side errors do to the high demand for the information, this increase in reported inaccessibility is always something to take seriously.
We strongly encourage you to user the Herdict reporter and help contribute to this real-time mapping of Internet accessibility and censorship.
Herdometer From the Twittersphere