Blocking Internet Searches in China

Today the OpenNet Initiative released a new report about Internet censorship in China. While a number of studies have established that China blocks search results about certain political, cultural, and religious subjects (see this report, for example), the new study takes the investigation a step further by looking at China's filtering of the Google cache. Caching -- the process of taking snapshots of webpages and archiving the data -- is a common practice for search engines like Google. As the report notes, accessing the cache is a "well known method of ad hoc circumvention of Internet censorship." ONI researchers from the Citizen Lab, the University of Cambridge, and the Berkman Center found that China's filtering mechanisms interrupt any search specifically targeted at cached data, both Google and non-Google and regardless of domain name. A story in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) broke the news of the ONI report, and another report appeared on Slashdot. Read the full ONI Bulletin.