Rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday described a major Chinese-organised Internet conference as chilling, calling it an attempt to have a greater say in the rules that govern the web.

The Chinese government has set up the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen this week with the theme "An Interconnected World Shared and Governed by All", according to its website.

"China appears eager to promote its own domestic Internet rules as a model for global regulation. This should send a chill down the spine of anyone that values online freedom," William Nee, China researcher at London-based Amnesty, said in a statement.

"China's Internet model is one of extreme control and suppression," he said.

China censors online content it deems to be politically sensitive, while blocking some Western media websites and the services of Internet giants including Facebook, Twitter and Google.

GreatFire.org, which monitors banned websites and keywords in China, said Tuesday that Beijing had just blocked "thousands" of sites using subdomains of edgecastcdn.net, which it described as one of the world's largest content delivery networks.

The World Internet Conference, which begins Wednesday, says it aims to "promote the development of (the) Internet to be the global shared resource for human solidarity and economic progress".

A session on "Constructing a Peaceful, Safe, Open and Cooperative Cyberspace" is described as closed-door and for invited guests only.

Some journalists registered to attend the conference were sent notices on Monday laying down rules for reporting.

"If the conference has not arranged an interactive session, please do not ask questions or interview at the scene," it said, adding: "During the meeting please do not walk about at will within the venue."

Asked to clarify the rules, a media contact said foreign journalists could apply to interview conference delegates beforehand through its official website.

Foreign participants in the conference include representatives of chip maker Qualcomm and professional networking site LinkedIn, according to the event website.

Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba which recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is also an invited guest.

WhatsApp messages get end-to-end encryption
San Francisco (AFP) Nov 18, 2014 - An online privacy tool endorsed by Edward Snowden is being used to protect WhatsApp messages from snooping by encrypting them as they travel the Internet.

Open Whisper Systems on Tuesday announced a partnership with Facebook-owned WhatsApp to useTextSecure protocol to essentially scramble messages in transit, hiding whatever is inside from prying eyes.

"WhatsApp deserves enormous praise for devoting considerable time and effort to this project," Open Whisper Systems said in a blog post.

"Even though we're still at the beginning of the rollout, we believe this already represents the largest deployment of end-to-end encrypted communication in history."

WhatsApp confirmed the announcement to AFP but declined to comment further.

TextSecure encryption enabled automatically as a default setting is already built into most recent version of WhatsApp for mobile devices powered by Google-backed Android software, with billions of messages being exchanged daily, according to Open Whisper.

"(WhatsApp co-founder) Brian Acton and the WhatsApp engineering team has been amazing to work with," Open Whisper said.

"Their devotion to the project as well as their thoroughness in getting this done are inspiring in a world where so many other companies are focused on surveillance instead of privacy."

Open Whisper is an open-source project supported by donations and grants.

While taking part in a South By Southwest conference earlier this year, former National Security Agency contractor Snowden praised encryption tools offered by Open Whisper.

Snowden connected to the gathering remotely from Russia, where he took refuge after leaking information about wide-scale online surveillance by the NSA.

Facebook in October completed its buy of mobile messaging application WhatsApp, with the mostly stock deal tallying nearly $22 billion.

Facebook, the world's biggest social network, announced the buyout of the WhatsApp messenger service, used by 600 million people, in February and US authorities approved the deal in April.