New Scientist: Google keywords knock Chinese surfers offline. "If you enter one of these keywords, such as the Chinese president's name, you loose all IP connectivity for five minutes," said Ben Edelman. "I suspect they may have had this system in the wings all along." (Thanks, S. Anand!)
NYTimes: China Seems to Refine Bid to Restrict Web Access. "Users searching for information on Falun Gong, the outlawed spiritual movement, turned up many references through Google. But exploring those references proved impossible, and users' Internet browsers often ceased to operate properly once an unauthorized reference had been clicked on."
According to the New Scientist, "the Chinese government refutes denying access to Google and has suggested that surfers could be suffering normal network problems." "It is quite normal with some internet sites that sometimes you can access them, and sometimes you can't," says an official from the Chinese government's information department. "The ministry has received no information about Google being blocked, and we have received no information about a block being lifted."
Posted by Aaron Swartz on September 15, 2002 02:21 AM