World Day against Cyber censorship

With this initiative, the organisation expresses their criticism of Internet censorship practiced by authoritarian regimes, allowing governments to control which types of information are available to their citizens. "Many authoritarian countries employ a whole army of censors in order to suppress government-critical information, blogs and social media," says Matthias Spielkamp, member of the RWB board. "With this initiative, we are unblocking specifically targeted websites to allow access to censored information."

Mirrored in Cloud
To make this possible, RWB are using a technique known as 'mirroring'. The censored sites are duplicated, and the copies then placed on the Cloud servers of Internet giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The only way to interrupt access to these mirror sites would be to block the entire server – which would deprive thousands of companies of essential services.

Unblocking news portals from around the world
RWB are targeting nine websites across the globe. These include the independent Russian news portal Grani.ru (blocked since 2014), the independent website Bahrain Mirror in India (blocked since 2011) as well as the news portal Fergana News, which is currently blocked in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

According to RWB's records, in the year of 2014 a total of 32 public authorities and institutions played a central role in suppressing critical voices and undesired information on the Internet. In 2015, the organisation has now decided to go beyond a mere documentation of the issue, and to actively combat Web censorship.

For further information visit Reporters Without Borders