China's 'Green Dam' Internet filtering project has attracted more controversy with a lawyer taking Industry and information Minster Li Yizhong to court over its implementation.

XieYanyi, a practising lawyer in Beijing, had filed a law suit last Friday against the minister for infringing citizens' right to freedom and privacy.

NONEThe legal action followed the announcement of the government's plan to install filtering software in all new computers with a programme called 'Green Dam Escort' aimed at weeding out and blocking "unhealthy information including pornography and violent contents".

Although the Chinese government had put off the mandatory installation of the controversial software two months ago, Xie insists that Li can be sued for "attempted crime".

"By requiring all computers to install the software, Li Yizhong is using his ministerial powers to illegally deprive citizens of their freedoms and privacy to post messages, make comments and exchange ideas freely and privately," Xie was quoted as saying in China's Daily Global Times.

He also said his law suit against the minister will be heard in the next two weeks.

Move to tighten Net censorship

The 'Green Dam' project has sparked controversy in the country and provoked protests from Internet users across the country as well as global companies doing business in China.

Despite the Chinese government claim that the 'Green Dam' project is aimed at protecting children from harmful Internet content, critics believe that the move is to tighten Internet censorship.

NONEThe Chinese authorities currently block dissidents and some foreign news websites by installing a firewall in all its web servers.

It is learnt that Internet users in certain areas of China cannot even access the social networking site Facebook as the authorities are worried that it could used to convey anti-government messages.

Internet users however managed to go around the censorship by using software such as 'Freedom-gate', which is said to be linked to the banned Falun Gong organisation.

If the 'Green Dam' project is implemented as proposed, Internet censorship in China will be enhanced by a more powerful control mechanism.

Garfield taken as porn by Green Dam

According to the 'Green Dam' user manual, the software automatically filters sex, violence and other “undesirable information” through analysing text and images.

However, when Chinese hackers cracked the software, they found that the filtering keywords database only contains 2,700 sex-related words, but there are some 6,500 words related to politics.

NONESome "sensitive" words such as "Falun Gong", "Falun Dafa" and "Zhong-Nan-Hai Incident" are included in the filtering keywords database.

The software has also been heavily criticised by Internet users for its bizarre tracking system.

ABC News reported that it blocks the photos of babies, pigs and even the popular cartoon character ‘Garfield’ as their pigmentation look much like a nude body.

Internet users also found that the software only work for Internet Explorer users, but not other browsers such as Firefox and Google Chrome.

Software contains security vulnerabilities

The 'Green Dam' issue has also drawn international attention.

A professor from University of Michigan J Alex Halderman recently released a study on 'Green Dam', arguing that the software contains a number of security vulnerabilities.

Yesterday, Malaysian Information, Communication and Culture Minister Rais Yatim confirmed media reports that the government was considering imposing a China-style Internet filter to block "undesirable" websites.

The Malaysian ‘Green Dam’ move was quickly condemned by the opposition which described it as a "horror of horrors" that would destroy the relative Internet freedom in Malaysia.

Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak has however denied that there was a government plan to filter the Internet.

He said that such censorship would be ineffective in a borderless world.

MCMC clarifies aim of proposed study

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has clarified that the aim was to get a better understanding of undesirable activities such as online frauds, phishing and identity theft as well as spam.

“This will help us to develop suitable approaches to reduce the incidence of such abuses.

"It is possible, that such approach may, amongst others, encompass encouraging parents to filter the Internet at home using Internet filtering technology or for ISPs to make available such tools for users to download,” the MCMC was quoted as saying.

MCMC, a government agency under the Energy, Water and Communications Ministry, is empowered to regulate matters relating to communications and multimedia activities, including private TV and radio stations as well as Internet websites.