The Google application tested in Venezuela takes note of the press censors
The Google application tested in Venezuela takes note of the press censors
Google has presented a tool to help fight censorship of the press around the world, testing it first in Venezuela, where journalists say they are fighting a government bent on burying stories online that expose corruption and human rights abuses.
News junkies in Venezuela who click on links to independent websites have been frustrated in recent years by messages on their screens saying that the pages do not exist, a problem that most blame the government for blocking access to critical information.
"It's very difficult to get news for people," said Melanio Escobar, a Venezuelan journalist and social activist who tested the Intra application in Googlebefore its release this month. "We promote this and other tools, but it's not easy."
The government controls the internet as the owner of CANTV, the largest Internet service provider with more than 2.5 million customers, and Escobar said that smaller, private providers follow their directives to stay in business.
The Press and Society Institute of Venezuela, a press freedom group, says that news websites that criticize the government have been increasingly attacked since 2014. A four-day trial that attempts to access 53 websites hundreds of times a day in August found that almost half were blocked According to the researchers. The Ministry of Communications of Venezuela did not respond to a request for comments from The Associated Press for this story.
The Android Intra only application is designed to thwart that tactic by connecting users' phones directly to the Google servers that access the domain name system, a kind of Internet phone book. This avoids any blockage established by local internet providers, making it difficult for governments or other intruders to deny access to certain websites.
The former oil nation is plunging into an increasingly deep political and economic crisis during two decades of socialist government and the government of President Nicolas Maduro has increasingly restricted or rejected the opposition media, often accusing them of receive signals from the United States and other foreigners who conspire to overthrow him.
Venezuelan journalists work under the threat of imprisoning or crushing lawsuits, leading several foreigners out of fear of their personal safety. A pro-government constitutional assembly created last year to circumvent the opposition-controlled congress has passed a law that dictates up to 20 years in prison for publishing material deemed hateful.
Jared Cohen, founder and CEO of Jigsaw, a unit of Google's parent company, said his team created the application from an ongoing conversation with journalists and Venezuelan technology experts about the obstacles they face in spreading the word. Intra was launched around the world on October 3 after a test during several months in Venezuela.
Cohen, a former US diplomat who advised Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton on issues related to freedom of expression in his term as secretary of state, said he and his team of engineers saw opportunities for use around the world.
"We did not build Intra for Venezuela," Cohen said. "But the ideas came from our work with Venezuelan journalists."
The application works on older Android devices that are still used by billions around the world, extending the protections built into the latest model of the phone.
Since the launch of Intra, it has been downloaded 130,000 times worldwide, according to Jigsaw. Venezuela is among the first three countries, but Jigsaw refused to name the others.
China is ranked as the worst abuser of Internet freedom in the world, followed by Syria and Ethiopia, while Venezuela is among the 30 countries classified as "not free" due to the actions of the government to counteract the critics in the networks social, according to a 2017 press freedom report published by Washington based on the House of Liberty.
Manipulation of domain names and other high-tech tactics have been used to restrict access to websites like El Pitazo and Armando.info, both formed by newspaper journalists who were once independent and who were bought by government businessmen.
The country's latest opposition newspaper, El Nacional, has also been blocked frequently, as has CNN's Spanish-language affiliate.
"Our journalism and research report contains elements that, as we see it, put the government in very uncomfortable situations," said César Batiz, news director of El Pitazo.
Batiz said he first tried to confuse the censors by changing the domains: using elpitazo.info and even elpitazo.ml, an Internet code for the African country of Mali, as well as elpitazo.com.
However, the website received a great success, after a report in September of 2017 that accused the head of the socialist party, Diosdado Cabello, of using his cousins as fronts for illicit businesses.
The 70,000 daily visits to the website page plummeted the next day to 11,000, said Batiz.
So far, the new application has not had a large number of readers, said Batiz, although the site urges readers to download it with the Twitter links of their stories, or through the WhatsApp audio messages. It is struggling to rebuild its base of readers, who rely on news presented by a network of 70 reporters across the country.
"While the traffic on our website decreases, we have gained recognition because people see that we are fighting for human rights and democratic freedoms," he said. "That's what we want to do."
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Scott Smith on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScottSmithAP
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