“According to complaints from many residents, Google’s English language search engine has spread large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and pornographic, seriously violating China’s relevant laws and regulations,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regularly scheduled news conference. “I’d like to stress that google.com, as an Internet enterprise providing services in China, should earnestly abide by Chinese laws and regulations.”

The disruption of Google (GOOG) services follows a widely criticized mandate from Beijing requiring all computers sold in the country to include Green Dam, an application designed to prevent citizens from viewing “offensive” content, which in the Chinese government’s case includes all manner of material. From a report by the Open Net Initiative, an academic consortium dedicated to the study of censorship and surveillance:

The version of the Green Dam software that we tested, when operating under its default settings, is far more intrusive than any other content control software we have reviewed. Not only does it block access to a wide range of web sites based on keywords and image processing, including porn, gaming, gay content, religious sites and political themes, it actively monitors individual computer behavior, such that a wide range of programs including word processing and email can be suddenly terminated if content algorithm detects inappropriate speech. The program installs components deep into the kernel of the computer operating system in order to enable this application layer monitoring. The operation of the software is highly unpredictable and disrupts computer activity far beyond the blocking of websites.

…The deeply intrusive nature of the software opens up several possibilities for use other than filtering material harmful to minors. With minor changes introduced through the auto-update feature, the architecture could be used for monitoring personal communications and Internet browsing behavior. Log files are currently recorded locally on the machine, including events and keywords that trigger filtering. The auto-update feature can used to change the scope and targeting of filtering without any notification to users.

Yesterday Dodd, along with Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.) said they plan to take steps to block FISA as long as it grants retroactive immunity to telecoms complicit in the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program. “No one seriously wants to financially cripple our telecommunications industry,” Dodd said in remarks before the Senate last night. “The point is to bring checks and balances back to domestic spying. Setting that precedent would hardly require a crippling judgment. It’s much more troubling, though, that our director of National Intelligence even bothers to speak to ‘liability protection for private-sector entities.’ This isn’t the Secretary of Commerce we’re talking about, but the head of our nation’s intelligence efforts. For that matter, how does that even begin to be relevant to letting this case go forward? Since when did we throw entire suits out because the defendant stood to lose too much? It astounds me that some can speak in the same breath about national security and bottom lines. Approve immunity, and Congress will state clearly: The richer you are, the more successful you are, the more lawless you are entitled to be. A suit against you is a danger to the Republic! And so, at the rock-bottom of its justifications, the telecoms’ advocates are essentially arguing that immunity can be bought.”

And, according to MAPlight’s analysis of PAC campaign contributions from Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T) and Sprint (S), it can.

To prevail, Dodd’s filibuster must be supported by 41 of the 100 senators. If its opponents can muster 60 votes–a distinct possibility given the number of Democrat’s who’ve compromised with the Republican White House on this issue–it will fail. And the 40 or so lawsuits over civil-liberties violations arising from the Bush administration’s controversial domestic wiretap program will be dismissed.

U.S. House and Senate leaders agreed yesterday to extend the Bush administration’s controversial wiretap program through at least 2012 and grant immunity to the telcos that participated in its warrantless domestic surveillance operation. Great news for AT&T (T) and other companies facing some 40 lawsuits over civil liberties violations arising from the program. Lousy news for those who filed them. “The lawsuits will be dismissed, and we feel comfortable that the standard of evidence that the law requires will be easily met,” said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., bluntly.

Comfortable that the standard of evidence the law requires will be met? How could you not be? The law allows the government to conduct “emergency wiretaps” without court orders on U.S. citizens for up to a week if the information is sensitive and the director of national intelligence fears it might be lost by seeking proper authorization.

Shades of J. Edgar Hoover, no? Said Rep. Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), co-chair of the House’s Progressive Caucus, “This bill scares me to death.“

That’s a good question to ask in light of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s call for “omnibus” Internet surveillance. In testimony to the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Mueller suggested legislation be passed that would give the bureau the right to monitor the Internet at the backbone level.

Said Mueller: “I think legislation has to be developed that balances on one hand, the privacy rights of the individual who are receiving the information, but on the other hand, given the technology, the necessity of having some omnibus search capability utilizing filters that would identify the illegal activity as it comes through and give us the ability to preempt that illegal activity where it comes through a choke point as opposed to the point where it is diffuse on the Internet.”

Shades of Carnivore, right? The “choke point” to which Mueller alludes is presumably the National Security Agency, which has been probing the data passing through the Internet backbone like some Orwellian spinal surgeon. Which is a little frightening. Because the packets of data being passed back and forth over the Internet don’t come prelabeled. There’s no “ILLEGAL ACTIVITY” designation. It’s just activity, and Mueller would apparently like permission to survey it all.

While respecting the privacy rights of the individual, of course. Thoughtful.

The U.S. Senate approved espionage legislation yesterday that would not only grant the National Security Agency sweeping new powers to intercept international phone calls and emails, but it would also grant retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that participated in the government’s post-9/11 warrantless domestic spying program.

With a 68-29 vote, the Senate passed the revision to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act along to the House of Representatives, which has already taken issue with its telecom-immunity provision. Said Sen. Chris Dodd (D., Conn.), “[The Senate has] just sanctioned … the single largest invasion of privacy in the history of the country.“

Sen. Russell Feingold (D., Wis.) was equally incredulous. “It is inconceivable that any telephone companies that allegedly cooperated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program did not know what their obligations were,” he said. “And it is just as implausible that those companies believed they were entitled to simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for assistance.”

Ah. And that being the case, it follows that we shouldn’t simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for broader clandestine surveillance powers. Right?

Said Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department intelligence lawyer who represents several telecommunication companies: “This is a dramatic restructuring of surveillance law. And the thing that’s so dramatic about this is that you’ve removed the court review. There may be some checks after the fact, but the administration is picking the targets.”

Welcome to Oceania …

Today the NSA-preferred telecom announced AT&T Remote Monitor, a package of IP video cameras and environmental sensors with which to surveil business locations and the employees who work in them. “It’s a unique and affordable option for a small business that wants to keep in touch with various locations,” Steve Loop, executive director for business development at AT&T, told the New York Times. “It saves them a lot of time in their day from having to physically go to all of their locations.”

Bet that’s exactly how the NSA felt when AT&T provided it with access to millions of email messages, Web-browsing sessions and phone calls. Anyway … AT&T’s touting the service as an easy way to monitor employees, customers and operations, which folks like restaurateur Beaux Roby says is a necessity. “It is Big Brother,” Roby said, “but in this day and age, you need these type of tools.”

And AT&T is, of course, ready and willing to provide them–whether it’s busting time-wasting employees, filtering the Internet for widespread copyright infringement or building that massive database of Americans’ phone calls.

Anyway, together with NBC and Disney, AT&T has invested a combined $10 million in Vobile, a company whose VideoDNA is rumored to be the gold standard of video content recognition systems and is considering deploying it at the network level.

The mechanics of the initiative haven’t all been sorted out, but sources tell BusinessWeek that one scenario involves traffic on AT&T’s network being routed through racks of Vobile servers that would scan it for NBC Universal and Disney content. And perhaps child pornography as well, you know, just to make the idea of network-level monitoring a bit more palatable to the masses.

Such a strategy, if AT&T were to pursue it, would make the company the first major Internet carrier to implement a network solution to copyright enforcement. And it would beg a number of questions: Will AT&T police the Internet traffic of its customers alone? Or will it police traffic over all its backbones and peering points (IE: traffic from other ISPs)? The answers could be troubling.

Suffice to say privacy advocates who’ve been railing against AT&T over the NSA debacle and issues of Net neutrality aren’t exactly thrilled with the company’s latest move. “They better be very careful,” warned Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This is serious, serious stuff, to basically invade the privacy of all of your subscribers.”