Malaysia is considering the establishment of an Internet filter similar to China’s abandoned “Green Dam” project, a source familiar with the process said yesterday.
News of the proposal emerged within days of police arresting nearly 600 opposition supporters at a weekend rally denouncing a government that has ruled this Southeast Asian country for 51 years.
A vibrant Internet culture has contributed to political challenges facing the government, which tightly controls mainstream media and has used sedition laws and imprisonment without trial to prosecute a blogger.
“They [the government] are looking to tweak the technical and legal details of implementing this Internet filter, setting the stage for its implementation late this year or next year,” the source said on condition of anonymity.
No one from the government was available for comment.
“Submissions are to be handed in by July or August. About four groups have tendered for this project,” the source said.
China last month delayed the introduction of its proposed Green Dam internet filter which authorities said sought to stamp out pornography. Opponents of censorship, industry groups and the United States said the project was intrusive and unfair.
Malaysia plans to double home Internet penetration to 50 percent by the end of next year with a new broadband project.
New Malaysian Information, Communication and Culture Minister Rais Yatim, whose ministry issued the tender, also plans to secure control over the content and monitoring division of Malaysia’s Internet regulator, a second source said. “The minister wants to focus more on enforcement in the coming year,” the source said.
Malaysia, with a population of 27 million, attracted foreign technology companies such as Microsoft Corp and Cisco Systems to invest and guaranteed that the government would not impose controls on the Internet.
Rais said last month that wider broadband access required more regulation.
“With the good comes the bad through the broadband over the Internet,” he said. “We will introduce certain measures to overcome the bad.”
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
RSS