This is an interesting take on propaganda and information warfare though titled cyber warfare. It is interesting to note the intersection of free speech and the Internet which has been becoming much more frequent.

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Last week, a Chinese court sent Chen Shuqing, a dissident internet writer, to jail for four years on charges of subversion. Meanwhile, in the northern Russian city of Syktyvkar, 21-year-old blogger Savva Terentyev is looking at two years in prison for making a derogatory comment about the police in an online diary.

Two disparate cases, thousands of miles apart, that send a very clear message about how ruthlessly China and Russia are patrolling their internet borders. This vigilance could serve as useful preparation for cyber war, an increasingly important battlefield where the West risks being overwhelmed.
The internet is a conduit of free speech but also a weapons delivery system. Authoritarian regimes have had to develop defences against the internet to stem the flow of independent thought.

And having learnt how to defend themselves, these states are well- versed in techniques that can be deployed against other nations.

In China any politically sensitive material is blocked by a complex firewall called jindun gongcheng, the Golden Shield. It prevents Chinese citizens in internet cafes from logging onto anything potentially subversive, like a blog supporting independence in Tibet or Taiwan. Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia use similar shields. China's shield is so sophisticated at blocking inbound traffic it could one day be used to block incoming cyber-attacks.

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