Posted on 08/29/2006 9:08:51 AM PDT by hipaatwo
The New York Times has blocked British readers from accessing an article published in the US about the alleged London bomb plot for fear of breaching the UK's contempt of court laws.
Published in the US yesterday under the headline "Details emerge in British terror case", the article claims to reveal new information about the alleged terror bomb plot that brought British airports to a standstill earlier this month.
Online access to the article from the UK has been blocked and the shipment of yesterday's paper to London was stopped. The story was also omitted from the International Herald Tribune, the NYT's European sister paper.
The article purports to contain new information about Scotland Yard's surveillance of the alleged plotters and the subsequent police operation which resulted in the arrest of 24 suspects.
The claims in the article are based on testimonies from "British officials and others briefed on the evidence, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, citing British rules on confidentiality regarding criminal prosecutions" with six reporters contributing to the piece from New York, Washington and Pakistan.
Anyone from the UK attempting to read the article via the New York Times website is met with the message: "This Article Is Unavailable. On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial. "
(Excerpt) Read more at media.guardian.co.uk ...
Big deal. Once it's published online people anywhere can get it, most certainly anyone who seeks that info for their advantage.
Times Response:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/business/media/29times.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
In fact, they've actually created more interest.
So the Times will do its best to help keep secrets for britain, but not the US? Priceless
This is fairly disturbing. It demonstrates to governments around the world that it's possible to censor the web for particular geographic regions. This is going to lead to demands for a lot more of the same from repressive regimes worldwide. I won't be surprised when this comes up at the UN, not for denunciation, but under demands for 'sovereignty' by some nations to protect their citizens from objectionable content. 'Objectionable' meaning whatever those in charge think it ought to mean.
Quite easy to circumvent.
Look at my nic. Tor, anyone?
Technically-adept people (like me and you) know how to get around such things using proxies, but the average citizen doesn't. Plus, I'd expect nations enacting censorship to outlaw the use of proxies too, or to at least make the use of one a suspicious act meriting closer scrutiny.
Anybody who wants to read it online can just use one of a number of web proxies... or if that's too hard, they can use an online translation service as a proxy!
Just set your online translator to translate the webpage you want to read from say, Korean to English. Since there is nothing in Korean on the page, it translates nothing, but works as a proxy.
Of course, it might just be easier to find a free web proxy by searching Google, but this way makes you feel more clever.
:-)
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