No official comment was immediately available for the closure of the popular network. However, an official source on condition of anonymity said that the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) blocked it on directives from the government.

The private bdnews24 news agency said the measure was taken on a request from the elite anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) as users suddenly were barred from logging into the network since 6.30 pm.

A RAB spokesman, however, rejected the report, saying no request was made on their behalf to block the network.

The development came two days after the leader of the radical Islamic Shashantantrik Andolon, Fazlul Haque Amini, demanded a ban on the network for reported posting of materials hurting Muslim religious sentiments.

A row erupted in Pakistan when it recently decided to cut off access to Facebook till May 31 over a page featuring blasphemous cartoons of Prophet Mohammed.

Bangladesh government-run BSS news agency earlier today reported that the RAB troops arrested a “cyber criminal” of the city on charges of “cyber crimes”.

It said detained Rodin recently posted “objectionable, disfigured and satirical photographs” of several government leaders using different accounts.

From what I can tell, this is only a confirmed issue in Southern California at the moment, but seems to be wider than just a regional problem. Those who have contacted AT&T representatives were told that the site is in fact blocked, so this isn’t a technical problem, and all the other 4chan subdomains work fine.

SmartHide users may not worry. Everyone who is smart enough to use SmartHide enjoys the freedom of Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The Minister for Family Affairs Ursula von der Leyen kicked off and lead the discussions within the German Federal Government to block Internet sites in order to fight child pornography. The general idea is to build a censorship architecture enabling the government to block content containing child pornography. The Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) is to administer the lists of sites to be blocked and the internet providers obliged to erect the secret censorship architecture for the government.

A strong and still growing network opposing these ideas quickly formed within the German internet community. The protest has not been limited to hackers and digital activist but rather a mainstreamed effort widely supported by bloggers and twitter-users.

As part of the public’s protest an official e-Petition directed at the German parliament was launched. Within three days 50,000 persons signed the petition – - the number required for the petition titled „No indexing and blocking of Internet sites” to be heard by the parliament. The running time of an e-Petition in Germany is 6 weeks – within this time over 130,000 people signed making this e-Petition the most signed and most successful ever.

The worst fear, of course, is that once the German government has an Internet censorship apparatus in place, it will be deployed by authoritarian elements of the government, political parties or security agencies to repress freedom of political expression, dissent and free access to information.

What can we say, it is highly possible that Germany is on its way to stand up in one line with such countries as China, Iran, Lebanon, Cuba and North Korea.

My name is SmartHide Octopus and I will keep SmartHide Community up-to-date regarding all the security-related news and interesting facts around the problem of identity protection and data encryption.

More and more internet users around the World suffer from all the sorts of restrictions set by the Governments in different countries. People are not able to explore the World Wide Web, communicate with each other and get access to the information they need.

In my Blog I will try to address all these facts and gather all the related news and information in one place – Security Octopus blog.

Stay tuned and let’s start our journey!