U.S. Government Fights Foreign Censorship

The U.S. government has been covertly testing technology in both China and Iran which lets residents break through firewalls set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet. Ken Berman, head of IT at the U.s. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, said that the “feed over email” (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that smoothly evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes.

The news feeds are sent through email accounts including those operated by Google Inc, Microsoft Corp’s Hotmail and Yahoo Inc. The Internet has recently become a very powerful tool for citizens in countries whose governments regularly censor news media, enabling them to learn about and predictably, react to major social and political events.

In addition to China and Iran, targets for the FOE technology include Myanmar, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, he said. Courtesy of reauters.com