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Top 10 List of Worldwide Internet Censors
PreacherTom writes "Reports of internet censorship are nothing new and are quite expected from countries whose leadership depends on controlling the popular worldview. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris group that does advocacy work for press freedom, puts a number to the trend with a list of the countries that it says go the furthest to censor the Internet. Photos document the worldwide protests and continuing struggles. Not surprisingly, China is described as the pioneer of internet censors, dedicating more resources than any other country to restrict online freedoms." This week we also discussed the Reporters Without Borders' 13 Enemies of the Internet list.
Myanmar, China, Belarus, Iran, Tunisia, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, North Korea, Syria, and Uzbekistan.
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Did anybody (Editors/Submitter) RTFA? I mean the first line of the article is:
Some simple math, 1 = China, 2 = Myanmar, 3 = Belarus . . . and then add another 10 . . . That gives you 13, well at least around here it does.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Get real. The first order of business for NK-ans should be getting some food and some freedom.
Owning a tunable radio receiver (as opposed to the one with only the DearLeader presets) is a crime in North Korea. Computers/internet access, as nice as that sounds, just isn't an option.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
What they don't say is the amount per user. China has the greatest number of internet users, which would take more people to handle the internet censoring. If you only allow 3,000 people to access the internet it is very easy to limit them. When you have 200,000,000 people it take more -- especially when there are many people trying to hack through their blocks.
Fight Spammers!
in most of those countries, the wookie *always* wins. people don't really get to vote on much of anything other than feeble local councils, if that
As an American who has relocated to work in China, I have yet to have problems with the censors. The ping times and transfer rates to and from the US are really slow, but I can get to everything I need. I can read the NYTimes, WSJ, CNN and, most importantly, ./. I can even read this post and all the comments, even the ones that bash the Chinese Government. I don't think it's because the censors are asleep today. For instance, there was a story today in the WSJ today that covered the riots at a hospital in southern China. I'm sure the official news, Xin Hua, forgot to cover the even, but that didn't stop me from reading the story. To say that the government has this firm grip on the Chinese people is nothing more than a clear sign of ignorance. There are far to many people here for the government to even think about trying to keep an eye on everyone or maintaining tight control. Also, the techniques that are highly effective for tracking people in the US don't exist here. This is a cash society. You can go for months or years without leaving any electronic record of your existence. In the US, you can't even drive down the road without your license plate number being picked up or buy breakfast without your debit card indicating that you where Noah's Bagels on University Ave. at 7:07AM and that you bought the Kona Blend. Organizations such as the NSA have deep pockets, tremendous resources, and some very smart people.
For 99.99% or the people here, we are free to go about our business. As long as you are not advocating the overthrow of the government or engaging in illegal activities you aren't going to have too many problems here. (disclaimer: business where there is a lot of money at stake are another matter) I need not remind you how the laws have been changing in the US for anyone implicated in overthrowing the US government. Try going to websites that advocate the overthrow of the US government and have bomb making instructions. Better yet, set one up inside the US and see how long it is till you get censored. See if the two governments are really all the different. Governments defend themselves. You might not agree with the ways they do it, but they do it nonetheless. And of course the US government has NEVER tried to cover anything bad they they did up...
I'm not implying that I'm a big supporter of the Chinese government. There are a lot of things they need to improve on and change. The list is very long. However, the Chinese government is making massive improvements every year and should be given credit for doing so.
I write this b/c I think there is a tremendous amount of misunderstanding in the US of what it is really like to live in China.
How does this then compare to China wich allows most of its citizens access except to certain sites.
The first is a dictator's wetdream, you, the ruler in total control of all the information. The second is just trying to put out the fire in a vulcano with a spoon.
The very fact that chinese citizens are arrested for accessing information offlimits to them is "good" news. Not for the individual in question offcourse but at least it shows that the chinese citizens as a whole know there is information hidden from them.
Have a show trial for a person accessing an illegal foreign news source and all you will do is advertise to your citizens that this news source exists.
Mom to kid B: Okay I have Kid A a severe spanking for stealing cookies from the kitchen.
Kid B: There are cookies in the kitchen?
Worry less about the countries from wich we here horror stories about repression of information. Worry about those countries we hear nothing from at all.
They forgot Denmark on that list. The danish courts have already started building the great firewall of Denmark. It's sad to see a country priding itself on their freedom of speech, allow private organisations to determine what the danish internet users should see or not see. I'm thinking of the IFPI vs Tele2 case in which the court decided that Tele2 should block access to the AllOfMp3 site. Mark my words... This is the beginning of the end of uncensored internet in Denmark. This is truly sad times.
http://www.moerks.dk
What is our list made of?
6+4+3=13
6 Muslim countries (Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Syria), 4 communist countries (China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam), 3 dicatorships (Myanmar, Belarus, Uzbekistan).
While I am not sure about Uzbekistan, I feel pretty safe about the classification. Countries classified as muslim/communist probably can be tagged as dictatorships too (or as undemocratic to say the least).
So it can be safely said that internet censors are those with ideologies that are/were opposed by the US. We should not be surprised as internet is an american invention and is mostly dominated by english language / western content.
Still, it's a great reminder that democracy and free speech are not things that you can take for granted. Given another decade or two of passivity on the part of American voters*, and the USA could wind up taking a place on lists like that. On the other hand, if Americans were to start taking ideas like liberty seriously, they could start using phrases like "Land of the Free" again, without everyone bursting into derisive laughter and then assaulting them with nerf weapons.
* (Am I really the only liberal that was disgusted that Americans actually voted for the Democrats as their progressive party?! Lame. Seriously lame. That party gave America the DMCA, which to this day stifles security research and technological advancement. They destroyed an aspirin factory using cruise missiles to distract people from the fact that th president was LYING UNDER OATH TO THE SUPREME COURT. That should be considered treason for a president. Why can't Americans start voting for a pair of rational parties; Green vs Libertarian would make for a great election, don't you think?)
I suggest a multi-thousand dollar prize for the first hacker who can open up their servers so the N.K. citizens can see the whole web.
I can't say there is much to recommend it. It is likely that there would be no meaningful payoff that would last more than minutes. Even if you were successful in creating temporary access to a wider range of internet sites, it is likely that the few North Koreas who use the web would be too terrified to make use of it, assuming they even knew about it. Given the nature of the regime, you can assume that their secret police record, monitor, review, and act on the traffic in ways that far exceed the most lurid fantasies about the NSA. Surfing unauthorized web sites would likely constitute a punishable act, especially if an unauthorized site was visited that contained unvetted political, economic, or religious information. If you've stepped over the line in North Korea, you could easily fall prey to the "heredity rule", developed the Dear Leader's father. Under that rule, the North Korean secret police arrest and imprison three generations of a family for the misdeeds of one of them, often for life, which can be short in a North Korean "prison camp" AKA death camp.
Besides, the international incident with the paranoid, now nuclear armed, barbaric regime which is starving its people wouldn't be worth it.
If anyone still insists on it, I suggest you stay away from at least the Koreas and Japan as North Korea has a long history of kidnapping people from those countries for various reasons. Given their ties to organized crime, due to their many criminal enterprises, they could reach even further. Life there is tough even when you are useful to them.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
As I orginally typed it it was:
"Base 13, dude. Base thirteen."
But I ultimately decided, in the interest of safety, not to go for the strange loopy metametajoke. They tend to be explosively unstable.
KFG
Want to know if you have freedom of speech on the Internet. Try this simple test. Post a message stating:
<Name of my national leader> is a drooling idiot
If shortly thereafter, we never hear from you again, your nation does not enjoy freedom on the Internet. Judging from posts to Slashdot, the US enjoys truly extraordinary freedom.
[Insert pithy quote here]
If you intend to actually listen to this radio you have much bigger problem - making sure that nobody around you will squeal on you to the authorities.
Most of the citizens of NK actually believe in what their government is doing.
Straw Man Argument - You set up the Libertarians as a party defined by love of corporations when they are better defined for a love of small government
Straw Man Argument - You seek to align Libertarian with Emo Hipsters in an attempt to make them look retarded
False Dichotomy - You state that people who espouse libertarianism are either in bed with the corporations of the day or are emo hipsters. The reality of the situation is much more diverse in nature then you let on
Hopefully you will learn that such posts will not make you achieve good karma any sooner and will always be shot down. First think, then post.
Why? Also, what about countries that were founded from a mix of ethnicities, such as the US? And what about countries that would collapse if not for the food aid they get, such as North Korea?
What makes you think I am an American?
I see. An interesting take from someone who has personally risked their life to guarantee the independence of their country. You have personally risked your own life, haven't you? It seems a little easy for someone to say that they'd die for their independence, if they haven't lived in a totalitarian regime.
Out of interest, you say that a country is not defined by population size, but you've also said that a country's population has to be greater than one. Would a sexually active man and woman, willing to die for their independence, and part of a ethnic minority (whatever that is) be considered a country in your eyes?
The armed gang would just be the totalitarian government; the population would be the captured town, and it seems reasonable to assume that a town of people could be self-sustainable and self-reproducible.
The US has been considerably more successful in their revolts than the Chinese. The last American revolt gave them a free democratic government, a constitution that was rather ahead of its time in terms of rights, an economy and military that eventually succeeded all others in the world, and a nation that has so far lasted over two centuries.
The last Chinese revolt on the other hand (if you can call the Chinese Civil War that), resulted in a communist dictatorship that resulted in corruption and hyperinflation that for a good 40 years languished in poverty. Compare China's economic growth to Japan's in the same period, and you'll see the huge gulf between the two economies. Only within the past 15 years, with China opening up its markets to private business, has its economy begun to grow at a significant rate.
So I'm not sure how you rate the quality of Chinese revolts as being greater than American ones. Now, if you were talking quantity...
The current US administration, bad as it is, has a long way to fall before it gets as bad as China.
Uh... That's a reason?
"Gee, shouldn't we stop that bear gnawing Paul's face off like that?"
"Nah, it's already doing it."
"Hey officer! Shouldn't you stop that man gunning down those children?"
"Why? He's already doing it.