RSID: <<2025-07-24T23:31Z MFSK-32 @ 9265000+1500>>

Welcome to program 410 of Shortwave Radiogram.

I'm Kim Andrew Elliott in Arlington, Virginia USA.

Here is the lineup for today's program, in MFSK modes as noted:

  1:42 MFSK32: Program preview (now)
  2:53 MFSK32: Former VOA directors oppose VOA closure
  7:13 MFSK64: Study examines Chinese internet censorship
11:59 MFSK64: This week's images
28:13 MFSK32: Closing announcements


Please send reception reports to radiogram@verizon.net

And visit http://swradiogram.net

We're on Bluesky now: SWRadiogram.bsky.social

And X/Twitter: @SWRadiogram
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From Radio World:

Eight Former VOA Directors Oppose Closure

They filed an amicus brief with a federal appeals court

By RW Staff
July 22, 2025

Eight former directors of the Voice of America have told a court
that they support the current director's legal challenge to the
dismantling of VOA by the Trump administration.

The group filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia. They are Danforth Austin, Amanda
Bennett, Mary Bitterman, Geoffrey Cowan, David Ensor, Robert
Reilly, Chase Untermeyer and Sanford Ungar. The law firm that
filed the brief described the group as bipartisan.

Among other things, the directors described past situations "in
which they pushed back against pressure to influence coverage
from both sides of the political aisle, and in which they
reported on America's own foibles — under both parties — to
demonstrate to peoples across world the value of a free press
they could aspire to," according to a summary by the firm Foley
Hoag, which filed the brief.

"The brief presents evidence of VOA's 80-year history as a force
for American foreign policy influence through credible, accurate,
unbiased reporting to audiences numbering in the hundreds of
millions across the world, many of whom would otherwise lack
access to news they could trust."

In March President Trump signed an executive order dismantling
the U.S. Agency for Global Media, calling it corrupt, wasteful
and biased.

"The USAGM put VOA employees, including Director Michael
Abramowitz, on administrative leave," the law firm noted in its
summary.

"Abramowitz and others quickly filed suit and obtained a
temporary restraining order blocking the administration from
dismantling VOA." The government appealed, and the matter is now
with the appeals court.

"The brief argues that, for over 80 years, Congress has
consistently reaffirmed and reinforced the principle that to
achieve its aims and win over global audiences, the VOA must be a
free and independent source of news."

This is one of multiple legal actions challenging the
administration decision. Among them, Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty has sued USAGM to get its funding grant back.

In March, USAGM Senior Advisor Kari Lake said that "waste, fraud
and abuse run rampant" in USAGM. She alleged that the agency had
been victimized by national security violations, including spies
and terrorist sympathizers, spent hundreds of millions on "fake
news companies" and put out a product that "often parrots the
talking points of America's adversaries."

https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/headlines/eight-former-voa-directors-oppose-closure

See also:
https://savevoa.com/amicus/


Shortwave Radiogram now changes to MFSK64 ...



RSID: <<2025-07-24T23:37Z MFSK-64 @ 9265000+1500>>
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This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

Please send your reception report to radiogram@verizon.net

 

From TechXplore:


Study breaches 'The Great Firewall' to look at Chinese censorship

by Cyrus Moulton
Northeastern University
July 15, 2025

People have nicknamed the security system that monitors and
controls internet traffic entering and leaving China "The Great
Firewall of China."

But a firewall is just the beginning of the Communist country's
censorship system, new research from Northeastern University
finds.

"The image that people have now—'The Great Firewall'—is very
evocative, but it isn't very accurate anymore," says Laura
Edelson, assistant professor of computer sciences at
Northeastern. "There is absolutely a system in place that just
keeps foreign information out, but by itself, that system
wouldn't be very effective. There are these other layers of the
system in place."

So, instead of a Great Firewall, Edelson calls a framework for
understanding Chinese censorship "The Locknet" for its
resemblance to water locks that can allow or stop the flow of
information into and within the country.

"I think about it like an artificial lake in the middle of the
ocean," Edelson explains. "For the most part, the systems
reinforce each other and they can maintain this little separate
body of water, but it is connected, and just as sometimes the
larger internet sloshes over, sometimes the 'Locknet' leaks out."

It's no secret that China—like all countries, Edelson
notes—censors its internet. But while many Western democracies
have clear laws outlining what is forbidden online, exactly how
Chinese censorship operates, its effectiveness and how much that
censorship alters the internet in the rest of the world isn't
well understood.

Edelson and a researcher on China's governance and society at
online magazine ChinaFile sought to answer these questions and
others in a yearlong investigation.

They found that China has a dynamic, adaptable and multi-layered,
self-reinforcing censorship system.

The system works on three main levels ...

Network-level censorship is the so-called Great Firewall,
blocking foreign content from coming into China at the
country's borders.

Service-level censorship exists on any platform or service
offered inside the country—all of which must comply with
Chinese censorship rules.

Finally, self-censorship occurs on the individual level as
citizens censor what they put online in order to comply with
the state.

But there are some key aspects of the censorship system that make
it effective.

First, the three levels of censorship reinforce each other.

Service-level censorship forbids VPNs, certain apps and services
like Meta, for instance, thereby limiting the foreign information
reaching Chinese users and reinforcing network-level censorship.

Second, enforcement is "intentionally intermittent" but
consequential.

Accessing banned content or posting criticism of the government
can—but will not always—get a user "invited to tea," Edelson
explains, where the user will be brought into a police station,
questioned for hours, made to sign a confession and—if said tea
parties happen often enough—be sent to jail.

This encourages people to self-censor or "to stay within the
lines," as Edelson says, comparing this intermittent but
consequential enforcement to obeying the speed limit in a Western
democracy.

"Sometimes you can wildly violate the speed limit and drive 100
miles per hour down the highway and not get pulled over," Edelson
says. "But most people don't because they know that if you drive
100 mph down the highway, you will eventually get caught and you
could get caught at any time."

What that results in, she explains, is a population that
generally stays within bounds—say at 5 mph above the speed
limit—but could technically be pulled over at any time.

Moreover, enforcement is often contracted out to individual
companies whose success depends on remaining in Beijing's good
graces.

"They get instruction from the federal government, but they have
a lot of leeway as to how they implement those censorship rules,"
Edelson says. "So, companies are truly compelled to follow these
rules and, if they don't, those companies will cease to exist and
their executives will go to jail."

Which leads to the third point: the rules and regulations of what
is censored are expansive, but vague and flexible.

"What is banned changes day by day," Edelson says. "There are
some things that they do say 'these things are banned," but then
there's this whole other category of things that just disappear
and that there's no public visibility, there's no transparency."

Again, this vagueness encourages self-censorship and reinforces
censorship at the company or service provider level (if in doubt,
leave it out), and the network level.

But with a global internet, Edelson says the Locknet is not just
affecting users in China.

"It is very appealing to systems makers to make a platform or a
service that they can offer both inside China and outside China.
And if they're going to do that, then they have to be subject to
China's censorship," Edelson says.

Edelson also cites the example of Chinese AI systems and tools,
which may be cheaper, more efficient, publicly available … and
also likely trained according to Chinese censorship models or
censored in some way.

And while the internet was created by Westerners with Western
democratic ideals in mind, that doesn't mean that future
developments will be.

"The thing to remember is that you can make a standard that is
easier to surveil, easier to censor, and more efficient," Edelson
says. "Chinese engineers are advancing standards that bring along
privacy costs that I think would be unacceptable to most
Americans and simply aren't unacceptable in China and, in fact,
are a benefit to the Chinese government."

https://techxplore.com/news/2025-07-breaches-great-firewall-chinese-censorship.html

See also:
https://locknet.chinafile.com/the-locknet/intro/
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This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK64

Please send your reception report to radiogram@verizon.net
 

This week's images ....
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South Bend, Indiana, looking west across the St. Joseph River.
tinyurl.com/2yayznjv ...

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A vendor carries plastic balls on a bicycle, in New Delhi, July
17. tinyurl.com/26ryh3c5 ...

Sending Pic:207x138C;
 

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A blue grosbeak at the Adkins Arboretum, Ridgely, Maryland, July
19. tinyurl.com/2b8dlp4l ...

Sending Pic:201x135C;

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Lightning over Dupont Circle in Washington DC, July 16.
tinyurl.com/2bquvr37 ...

Sending Pic:200x136C;
 

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A "glorious sunset" at Eriskay, Scotland. tinyurl.com/252wvtjh
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Swans at dawn. tinyurl.com/2xphxcqn ...

Sending Pic:189x172C;

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An example from the Rose Garden at the Yakima Area Arboretum in
Washington state. tinyurl.com/25bhrqkt ...

Sending Pic:197x152C;
 

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The Avenue of the Giants is a scenic 31-mile (50 km) drive
through Humboldt Redwoods State Park in Northern California,
famous for its towering coastal redwood trees.
tinyurl.com/24bzq7w5 ...

Sending Pic:145x202C;


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Our painting of the week is "Vase of Amaryllis, 1941" by Henri
Matisse. tinyurl.com/25wpubwx ...

Sending Pic:168x207C;


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Shortwave Radiogram returns to MFSK32 ...


 

RSID: <<2025-07-24T23:58Z MFSK-32 @ 9265000+1500>>
 

This is Shortwave Radiogram in MFSK32 ...


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I'm Kim Elliott. Please join us for the next Shortwave
Radiogram.
 

RSID: <<2025-07-25T11:30Z MFSK-64 @ 15770000+1500>>


♫
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Sir Michael “Mick” Jagger of the Rolling Stones was born on
July 26, 1943.

Sending Pic:189x240;
 

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https://www.mickjagger.com/
 

Please report your decode to themightykbc@gmail.com.
 

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