By JANESS ANN J. ELLAO
Bulatlat.com
MANILA – International media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has included in their website mirroring campaign two Philippine alternative news websites, Bulatlat and Kodao Productions, following the intense cyber-attacks since December.
Bulatlat and Kodao Productions, along with many other alternative news websites in the Philippines, are being subjected to a well-funded Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack in an apparent concerted effort to stifle press freedom in the Philippines.
Related story: What you need to know about the ongoing cyber-attacks vs. alternative news Bulatlat
These attacks have led to the shutting down of their respective websites for days, until the cyber-attacks were mitigated by Sweden-based Qurium Media Foundation. The DDoS attacks, however, continue and remain relentless as of this writing.
The five-year-old campaign dubbed as Operation Collateral Freedom “circumvents technological censorship by means of an original strategy in which ‘mirrors’ or duplicates of the censored websites are created on the servers of the world’s Internet giants. Authoritarian regimes cannot block access to the mirrors without the ‘collateral damage’ of restricting their own access to the services of these Internet companies.”
A total of 22 media outlets that are blocked in their respective countries are now being mirrored, allowing “millions of people to access freely reported news and information.” Since it began its campaign, its “mirror” websites have received a total of 142 million visits.
Bulatlat and Kodao Productions are the only Philippine-based news organizations being mirrored by the media watchdog.
You may visit Bulatlat’s mirror website by clicking here.
The Reporters Without Borders began their website mirroring campaign of the two Philippine alternative news organizations on March 12, World Day Against Cybercensorship.
