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The Chinese government in particular is notorious for cracking down on information transmitted through electronic means while at the same time encouraging the same technologies to fuel its economic expansion.

Yesterday, the official Xinhua news agency announced that the government is cracking down on Internet news sites. The reports says that under the new rules, 'The state bans the spreading of any news with content that is against national security and public interest'. The report does not detail what this actually means although it suggests that news sites should 'be directed toward serving the people and socialism and insist on correct guidance of public opinion for maintaining national and public interests'.

According to the Shanghai Daily, any online news service found reporting 'false or distorted information' faces a fine of up to 30,000 yuan (US$3,700) and a two year ban under the new regulations.

In order that the news sites can afford the fines,

China already goes to some lengths to monitor and crack down on those who want to air the regime's dirty linen in public. Not only will the authorities use the full state apparatus to monitor internet traffic, they will also strong-arm ISPs into co-operating. Only this month, Reporters Sans Frontieres reported that Yahoo has colluded with the Chinese authorities to convict a dissident. Now the group has brought out a set of guidelines to help bloggers in China and elsewhere remain anonymous.

Much of the guidance is fairly straightforward - do not sign your real name (!) and use commodity webmail and blogging software, although as democracy campaigner Shi Tao found out, that only gives a certain level of protection. RSF recommends that all email should be sent using the publicly available PGP encryption. It also recommends that if you really need to keep clear of Big Brother you should use www.invisiblog.com/, a blogging system which uses encryption to post messages.

You can find the blogging guidelines at the Reporters Sans Frontieres website.