Why is checkers banned in north korea

Hayden feels that the T20 World Cup title is of great significance to Pakistan, which has been deprived of hosting international cricket for a long time due to security concerns.

I feel that as a nation that loves cricket as much as it does, and as focused so heavily on cricket, and also to have tournaments including the ones that I was a part of being cancelled for numerous reasons, it's never more important," he said. Hayden spoke highly of Babar and said his personality is completely opposite to that of India's Virat Kohli, a contemporary great of the game.

He's very consistent. He's very stable. He's not overly flamboyant. Got great control, and he's got a wonderful temperament," he said. He picks up the line and the length of the ball quicker than the average cricketer that's going around, and that's the mark of someone that's a very fine player. French lawmakers debated the proposed law on June 7, and it passed in early July. During election periods, the legislation will allow candidates to sue for the removal of contested news stories, Politico reported, and tech platforms will have to disclose the funding sources for sponsored content.

More than 50 senators from the French Republican Party LR and the Centrist Union group appealed to the Constitutional court over the law, which is among the first of its kind in Europe.

The lawmakers of the opposition parties argued that the law falls short of the principle of proportional justice, 20minutes reported. In December, the law was validated by the Constitutional Council and enacted three days later.

Having gone into effect Jan. Aimed at social networks with more than 2 million members — such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter — the law was passed in June and gave platforms until the end of the year to prepare for the regulation. A satirical magazine called Titanic published a piece with insults and was banned from Twitter, and even the minister of justice — who helped author the NetzDG — had his tweets censored.

In early March , officials considered revising the law following criticism that too much content was being blocked. Among those revisions includes allowing users to get incorrectly deleted content restored, as well as pushing social media companies to set up independent bodies to review questionable posts. Action: Database , proposed state law , proposed law amendment and internet shutdowns.

A state government in India is considering creating legislation aimed at punishing purveyors of online misinformation — specifically doctored photographs. The Economic Times reported in mid-June that West Bengal officials want to clarify how the state could additionally prosecute the publication of misinformation.

Currently, citizens can be jailed in the state for posting misinformation if it causes fear or alarm in the public. In addition to bolstering existing law, West Bengal has been preparing a database of fake news stories distributed on social media over the past few years. It has also kept records of past offenders, The Times reported. The efforts come amid rising tensions related to misinformation in India. Rumors on messaging platforms like WhatsApp have allegedly incited violence across the country and the national government itself has tried to issue anti-fake news guidelines in the past.

In October, Wired reported that the Indian government had turned off the internet more than times over the past year to quell the spread of rumors on WhatsApp. The shutdowns have cost the country billions of dollars and are more frequent than in any other country, according to Freedom House.

Some research also suggests that these are ineffective, and that misinformation, political turbulence and rioting still occur during shutdowns. In December, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology released draft changes to the IT Act that would require social media platforms to start tracing the originators of messages when compelled by the government. The effort is aimed at curbing the spread of unlawful content and misinformation on platforms like WhatsApp.

Action: Government task forces , arrests and site tracking. In January , President Joko Widodo appointed a head of the newly formed National Cyber and Encryption Agency to help intelligence agencies and law enforcement efforts combat online misinformation and hoaxes before nationwide regional polls that summer. The government has also been blocking websites that publish content deemed to be harmful for society.

The Jakarta Post reported that social media companies are also working with the government to block and remove fake content, as well as illegal media such as pornography. In late January, the government also deployed a tool that allegedly automatically tracks and reports sites publishing fake news stories.

In October, Bloomberg reported that the Indonesian government has a team of 70 engineers monitoring social media traffic 24 hours a day in an effort to detect online misinformation. The government has taken other substantial actions against misinformation.

In September, the communications ministry announced that it would hold weekly briefings to debunk misinformation. And in April, officials threatened to shut down Facebook if it failed to crack down on misinformation ahead of the election. The minimum sentence under the law is four years. In May of , the Indonesian government blocked access to certain social media features for almost a week following violent riots that broke out following the election of President Joko Widodo.

The measure was taken in an effort to curb the spread of hoaxes and calls for violence that had spiked on social media networks. It prevented users on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp from being able to upload photos or videos to the platforms. In June , a member of the Muslim Cyber Army was arrested in Java and charged with spreading fake news and hate speech. Lawmakers introduced a bill in early December that would make using a bot to create multiple fake accounts posing as different people spreading political messages a criminal offense.

The legislation also takes a page from the Honest Ads bill proposed in the U. Congress, eliciting widespread coverage as a law condemning all misinformation — an error in nuance that even Poynter made. Action: Court ruling. Focus: Foreign disinformation campaigns and propaganda. The Israeli government banned the publication of anonymous internet advertising on any platform ahead of the April 9, , election.

The Times of Israel reported that it banned anonymous ads created both in Israel and abroad, and it compelled the identification of fake accounts used for propaganda, bots, WhatsApp messages and surveys distributed on other messaging platforms.

Action: Online reporting portal , arrest and authority report. Focus: Misinformation and fake reviews. A little more than a month before the general election, the Italian government announced Jan. The service, which prompts users for their email addresses, a link to the fake news story or fabricated media and any social media networks they saw it on, ferries reports to the Polizia Postale, a unit of the state police that investigates cybercrime.

The department will fact-check them and — if laws were broken — pursue legal action. At the very least, the service will draw upon official sources to deny false or misleading information. In a landmark ruling in September, a man was sentenced to prison for nine months for selling fake TripAdvisor reviews to restaurants and hotels, The Washington Post reported.

The court decided that creating a false identity to write fraudulent reviews violated Italian law. Action: Criminal investigation. In March , the Kazakh government opened a criminal investigation into two news outlets for allegedly publishing false information.

According to Freedom House , Ratel and Forbes. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta signed a bill May 16, , criminalizing 17 different types of cybercrimes, including cyberbullying, espionage and computer forgery.

And misinformation made the cut. Malaysia made it a crime in early April to share misinformation, becoming the first Southeast Asian country to do so. Lawmakers in one house of parliament voted to repeal the legislation in mid-August after voters booted out the governing party. But the new opposition to the government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad blocked the repeal in the upper house of parliament in mid-September.

It also makes online service providers more responsible for third-party content, affects foreign news outlets reporting on Malaysia and anyone can lodge a complaint against an alleged purveyor of misinformation. Representatives from social media companies like Facebook and Google met with lawmakers in Kuala Lumpur in mid-March to get their views on the law.

He posted a YouTube video accusing Malaysian officials of taking 50 minutes to respond to a shooting on April 21, which police said actually took eight minutes. Action: Government fact-checking site. Verificado Notimex claimed it would debunk false news on social media and fact-check questionable content published by traditional media outlets.

In mid-October , three journalists were jailed in Myanmar after publishing a story about the Yangon regional government, which claimed the article was false. AP reported that the story, which was published by Eleven Media Group, alleged that the government misused public money. Action: Public awareness campaign. Focus: Media literacy. In February , the Dutch government launched a public awareness campaign aimed at informing people about the spread of misinformation online.

The campaign, which came months ahead of the EU Parliamentary elections, was predominantly waged on social media. Action: Media literacy campaign and state radio broadcasts. Focus: Media literacy and misinformation. In response to growing concerns and tensions related to misinformation, Nigeria has launched a campaign aimed at making people more critical news consumers.

In November , the BBC reported that the army had started debunking Facebook misinformation on a live radio broadcast. It has also set up hotlines for citizens to report misinformation, and some police officers are using their personal Facebook pages to debunk it. Action: Government training. In July , the Times of Oman reported that government and security agencies in Oman had elevated efforts to monitor fake news online. According to the paper, the Centre for Government Communications CGC held workshops with various government departments on best practices for dealing with rumors and false claims.

A spokesperson from the CGC said the measure aims to improve the rigor of official sources for information online. Action: Government Twitter account. In early October , the Pakistani government started going after misinformation on a platform where it regularly appears: Twitter. Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry told the news outlet that the government would additionally take action against those that spread misinformation.

Action: Dismissed bill. The bill seeks to impose penalties of up to 2 million pesos or even imprisonment on those found guilty of spreading false information online and on social media.

However, the measure was challenged as unconstitutional, and President Rodrigo Duterte has said in the past that such a law would never pass. Action: Bill , joint cybersecurity group and database. Focus: Misinformation and election misinformation.

The legislation exempts mainstream news organizations like newspapers and TV stations. The New York Times reported in July that the legislation, which lawmakers from the ruling United Russia party submitted in mid-July, would also hold social networks accountable for inaccurate comments that users post. If passed, the bill will go to President Vladimir Putin for his signature. In November , Russia signed a pact with Spain to create a joint cybersecurity group aimed at preventing misinformation from affecting diplomatic relations between the two.

The move came after Spanish ministers accused Russia of spreading misinformation about the Catalan referendum. Action: Arrests and policy proposals.

Focus: Media regulation and misinformation. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists around the world, CPJ found that the country jailed the third most journalists on false news charges in , with three.

In May , The East African reported that Rwandan authorities were mulling over regulations that would prohibit the spread of misinformation on social media. If passed, such legislation would likely be an addendum to existing Information and Communications Technology Ministry regulations about harmful online content.

Action: Government threats. Action: Law , parliamentary report and media literacy campaign. In May , Singapore became the latest country to pass a law criminalizing the dissemination of false information online.

The law punishes people who post false information with heavy fines and even jail time. One of the most popular apps is a role playing game based on "Boy General," a locally created hit anime series.

Foreigners in North Korea are relegated to a different network and cannot make calls to, or receive calls from, local numbers. They can buy local phones if they want, but the devices will be stripped of the apps and features that they normally carry and securely coded so that the apps can't be added on later. Wi-fi use is banned for North Koreans, and tightly restricted and monitored to block surreptitious piggybacking on foreigners' signals.

North Korea undoubtedly imports and rebrands some of its IT products. But over the past few months, two companies have generated quite a stir among Apple fans with products billed to be wholly domestic: the "Jindallae Azalea III" mobile phone and the "Ryonghung iPad.

The gadgets' insouciant similarity to Apple products, and the flat-out appropriation of the "iPad" name, isn't especially surprising. Kim Jong Un likes Apple products — he has been photographed with a MacBook Pro on his private jet, and even had a inch iMac on the desk beside him when state media showed him reviewing a nuclear "U.

Outside experts believe a program similar to what Apple uses in its OS X and iOS is believed to be the basis of the booby-trap that thwarts attempts to disable security functions in Red Star. It's now a staple on North Korean phones. And by , all mobile phone operating systems had been updated to include the watermarking system to reject apps or media that don't carry a government signature of approval. It's the same mechanism used by Apple to block unauthorized applications from the App Store, but in North Korea's case serves instead to control access to information.

While blocking off the masses, North Korea allows more Internet access to a small segment of society, including the country's elite and its cybersoldiers. To create a snapshot of the online behavior of the elite, U. They found that the limited number of North Koreans with access to the Internet are much more active and engaged in the world and with contemporary services and technologies than many outsiders had previously thought, according to Priscilla Moriuchi, Recorded Future's director of strategic threat development and a former NSA agent.

How deep the access goes isn't known. Recorded Future and Team Cymru officials contacted by The AP refused to comment on details of their dataset, including how many "elite" users were observed and how foreign tourists or residents in the North were excluded. Even so, it stands to reason at least some members of the North Korean leadership have the access they need to keep up on world events and that specialist agents are allowed to monitor and cull intelligence from the internet.

There is also strong evidence that North Korea allows people involved in hacking or cyber operations the access necessary for a deep engagement in cyberattacks and cybercrime. According to the FBI, the North's bigger hacks include the recent WannaCry ransomware attack, which infected hundreds of thousands of computers in May and crippled parts of Britain's National Health Service.

It has been linked to attacks on the Bangladeshi central bank last year and on banks in South Korea going back to There was also the hack of Sony Pictures over the release of the "Interview," a black comedy that graphically portrayed Kim Jong Un being killed.

Weaponizing cyberspace is a logical option for the North because it can be done at relatively low cost and at the same time denied, according to a Congressional report submitted in August. Pyongyang has denied hacking allegations, but the ability to carry out sophisticated cyber operations is a powerful military weapon in the hands of a state. Just as assuredly as North Korea is developing its nuclear and missile capabilities, most experts assume, it's honing its cyber warfare tool box.

Beau Woods, the deputy director of the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, cautioned of a "preponderance of question marks" regarding North Korea's cyber skills. But he warned of how potentially devastating a more cyber-active North Korea could be. Those concerns are turned on their head back at the Sci-Tech Center in Pyongyang.

Pak, the chemist, supports the official line in North Korea that the increasing danger of cyberattacks and slanderous Internet propaganda comes from the U. The government says that justifies "protective" walls to shield the masses from aggressive propaganda, and virtually requires extensive cybersecurity measures in the name of national defense. Talmadge has been the AP's Pyongyang bureau chief since and has traveled to the North more than 40 times. Follow him on Twitter at EricTalmadge and Instagram erictalmadge.

Skip to content. The regime created, in other words, an online version of North Korea itself. Surfing the intranet.