Slashdot Mirror
Global Internet Censorship On the Rise
An anonymous reader writes "State-led internet censorship is on the rise around the world. According to a study conducted by the Open Net Initiative and reported by the BBC, some 25 of 41 countries surveyed were filtering at least some content. Skype and Google Maps were two of the most often-censored sites, according to the article. 'The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms. The report said: 'In a growing number of states around the world, internet filtering has huge implications for how connected citizens will be to the events unfolding around them, to their own cultures, and to other cultures and shared knowledge around the world.'"
Governments have done this with newspapers and other media for ever.
I emailed a Chinese colleague to get his comment on this story -- but the link is blocked. Oh well...
Not in Soviet Russia!
How does Skype conflict with "politics and power, security concerns and social norms"?
Bullshit. These countries think that allowing one company to dictate how their populace communicates represents their people.
The ideas set forth in the First Amendment of the US Constitution should ideally apply to all citizens of the world. Discuss.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms
In other words, the filtering had one rationale: power.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
i just finished reading this on another article. what a coincidink!
/me shoots self in the face for saying coincidink
It's sure too bad we didn't turn the control of the Internet over to the UN, like you guys all wanted...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
there is censorship betwen mediums which means that the information on the internet is being cutted and not published in the tv or radio.
OF course the internet is for freedom!!! I invented IT
?
It's axiomatic that the web will eventually become a weapon of tyranny. Through selective censorship and the general sense that it's so unreliable from an accuracy perspective and therefore easy to manipulate and spin, the web will be used for agendas and the geek era will be over.
The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Censorship simply causes the information to flood fill to other areas. Increasing censorship gives more TOR, more freenet, more "open proxies" etc.
Deleted
You can use now TOR for hidden services.
That's right. You can use TOR to run an anonymous and encrypted servers with onion as TLD.
Actually you should welcome these developments since it will draw more and more people into secure networks and more people make secure networks faster.
If the political class wouldn't start to molest people in insecure networks they wouldn't use secure networks. And secure networks are better by default.
This kind of blocking is easy to circumvent with a HTTPS tunnel, if the person being blocked has a friend in a "free country"
For example the BarracudaDrive tunnel is easy to setup and use. From the BarracudaDrive tunnel doco:
You may live in a country with limited freedom and access to the Internet. If you have a friend in the western world, you can have him host a BarracudaDrive server for you. You may then securely and anonymously access the Internet without limitations. Unlike the online proxies, it is virtually impossible for a country to set firewall rules to block out home users running BarracudaDrive on their broadband connection.
This post has been deemed unsuitable for public viewing and has been deleted.
*Redacted*
End of message.
There is another aspect to this - instead of blocking, some governments monitor. By monitoring, they can profile people who either openly oppose the regime du jour and then arrest/detain/harass as they wish.
Carnivore would be an example here. The new leaning on ISPs for user records. Requiring archiving of all activity. Or just silently copying and keywording all traffic.
In some ways, monitoring is more dangerous and insidious than censorship as it allows building cases against perceived "enemies" of the state.
Free discussion of ideas is an anathema to both big business and governments. Big business can't tolerate it because it wants to create artificial scarcity in order to maximize profits. Governments can't tolerate it because it makes it easier for people to see through the distortions and lies that governments use to manipulate and control the people.
The internet is the biggest threat to both. When the internet was just a curiosity and required some technical skill to make use of, it posed no real threat to business and government. Now that the average person can easily get onto it, that situation has changed.
And so, governments are increasingly censoring the internet. This is no surprise. Most governments (including that of the "land of the free") have the interests of the people somewhere close to the bottom of the list.
Additionally, governments are figuring out that they can basically do whatever they want without any significant repercussions, as long as they control the military and the law enforcement agencies. The people can't do squat when the government controls all the guns. Control of the internet represents control of information, which ultimately means control over the opinions and actions of the people. And control of the people is very high on the list of the interests of government, because the people in control of government tend to be power-hungry sociopaths (who else has as much interest in acquiring power as they do, and thus as much interest in obtaining positions of power?).
The move towards oppressive, fascist government is a worldwide trend, one which seems to be unstoppable. That's what happens when power-hungry sociopaths who want total control over the population also happen to control all the guns. It's such a shame that a worldwide police state is a stable form of government that's capable of lasting thousands of years (since police states require outside pressure to topple them, and when all the world's a police state, there is no outside).
Enjoy what freedom you have left. It won't last.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Not just the internet XM a pay service that offers "uncensored extreme language programming" has suspended Opie and Anthony for something a homeless guy said on there show. Oh, did I mention they are in the middle of a merger with Sirius as well. Whats next, no foul language on HBO/Showtime?
a spxa spx
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-g...ops-at-xm.
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-g...in-letter.
http://www.peopleagainstcensorship.org/
http://www.wackbag.com/
Does anybody know why they block that? I can't imagine it is that useful for coup-planning or something like that.
Just the sort of story
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Companies place shareholders profits over ethics. With censorship comes government approval, with that, comes money. Just ask google.
we should blindly accept whatever is there on the net as "right"? or rephrasing, what you think is right?
Indian women today are better off because General Napier had the gall to impose his culture on Indian men who thought it was perfectly natural to burn a wife alive when her husband died. Today, Indian women don't have to worry about being lit up like a firecracker because their husband bought the farm. How many normal Indian women would seriously say, "damn that British fascist for not allowing our men to incinerate perfectly healthy Indian women like they were kindlin?"
Part of the Western tradition is a belief that there is a natural law, and that this law dictates many things that other cultures don't respect. It is a religious belief in many respects, but it is the idea that there is a universal order that mandates liberty, accountability and peace, rather than subordination of the individual to the herd.
The world would be better off if American soldiers in Iraq strung up the men involved in honor killings from the nearest object capable of lynching a man, if it castrated and otherwise humiliated those who engage in female circumcision and if it did similar acts of "cultural imperialism." Why? Because no one ever gave these victims a choice whether or not they wanted to be oppressed, tormented, mutilated and murdered.
The part that concerns me most is that the historical record is now impermanent. Unlike physical media (paper) it's possible to alter historical perspective.
Editing archived articles is easy and has been done for many reasons, some of which I'm sure could be attributed to censorship/tyranny.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Remember the ongoing "net neutrality" debate? What ATT and friends want for their networks is exactly what is needed to censor the internet. It's costly, stupid and unAmerican but you and me are going to pay for it. They started building the wiretap part before 9/11 2001. Shaping comes after listening.
If you want evidence of government censorship of the internet, look no further than Iraq. There websites are blocked to US servicemen and reporters are treated like spies. The US government has already used it's broadcasting ownership to censor TV and radio, so there's abundant evidence of their intent.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Skype is encrypted by default, not to mention stealthy (uses port 80 plus p2p-ish networking).
Once upon an Internet, Bill Clinton signed an executive order classifying encryption as munitions.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
Many countries esp. China and USA require that all communications be open to be listened in on. CALEA pushed it for general comms and under USA PATRIOT act, it forced the issue onto voip, which includes skype. This should be more obvious in light of what has been coming out concerning W's spying on American.
And china, being china, wants total exposure of their citizens all the time.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
gnunet, tor, freenet.
I must respectfully disagree. I'm a German, and Germany has placed considerably limits on so-called "free speech"; and I'm fine with that. Why should I give holocaust deniers and nazi propagandist the right to be heard? And please don't trot out the old canard of "they'll be after your free speech next" - those limits have been in place since about 1946, and I don't know of any case when they were abused to censor other political speech. Feel free to enlighten me with examples to the contrary.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
This is a really bad trend, and one that some governments would jump on for important reasons:
The Internet has really 2 core benefits when you look at it's global impact. First you have people who have great lives and live in great countries who can now see instant information about all the horrid things going on in other parts of the world. It helps to get more people caring about what's going on.
And second, it allows people who live in bad conditions or under oppressive governments to see what it could be like somewhere else. They can learn what they "should" have. That they have human rights. That there is such thing as freedom. It can inspire them.
So, what this does is it gives both sides of the world so to speak the motivation and often the means to reach out to each other - to offer help and to ask for/demand it. To get fired up about change.
It's no wonder that many governments and even corporations are worried about that. But in the end... people will find a way around any censorship and change will happen no matter how hard N. Korea or China or whoever tries to fight it.
"The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms"
That's four rationales.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
The BBC has been explaining to me just how evil I am for the last 40+ years.
Thanks for your input, but compared to the professional Big Lie artists at the beeb, you're a relative piker.
Keep at it, however, I hear3 the Hugo Chaves has a gigantic anti-US propaganda machine just firing up. You could do worse than earn decent money in a decent climate, all for doing what you love.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
From this list, we can conclude that Asia really has only 3 Western nations: Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Neither Singapore nor South Korea is Western though they are economically prosperous. Both Singapore and South Korea censor the Internet.
In Asia, the natural allies of the USA and the European Union are only the Western countries. They share similar values. Our energies should be focused on building strong economic and military ties with Japan, New Zealand, and Australia.
Our relationship with South Korea should be downgraded to the level of China or Thailand. Ditto for Turkey.
They'll NEVER prevent me fro
[[[NO CARRIER]]]
I'm not sure I follow your comment. What I was saying is that with censorship, people's access to "forbidden" information is simply blocked - though records could certainly be kept and monitored of the attempts to access. Sure it is censorship but the point is to merely deny access to information.
However, monitoring is allowing free access but keeping tabs on the activities. Basically giving the citizenry the rope to hang themselves with.
In some cases, monitoring can be used to find terrorists and true enemies of the state. (whether a population prefers privacy over "security" is another issue) In others, depending on the paranoia level of the state, it can be used to find citizens who oppose a government or a "leader" but are not terrorists bent on killing as many as possible. Monitoring is the kind of activity that is desirable if you are a paranoid "leader" who wants to expand, consolodate, or hold on to power. It takes a lot of trust to allow a government to monitor and hope they won't use it for the wrong reasons. It seems that there are no examples where this has been allowed and not abused. Or even abused where not explicity allowed.
We are in one of those cycles now -- that's why more and more are calling for Alberto Gonzales' resignation over the illegal wiretaps that were justified as a way to combat terrorism.
I think this is a travesty! I have informed **&&^*&^^&* and ^%%$$$%*, who both plan to organize a rally at &**((**(&%^. If want to help, go to *&*^&*^%&^%&^%&^%&^%%&^%&^%&^ and sign up!
Some settling may occur during posting.
Governmental control of the populace.
Anything else is just an excuse to get public support in turning in their rights.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Hmmm...Whatever you say...I can accept that...:-(
What?
OK, so if it is such a good thing, why not make it a transparent process instead of hiding it?
From the BBC report: "What's regrettable about net filtering is that almost always this is happening in the shadows. There's no place you can get an answer as a citizen from your state about how they are filtering and what is being filtered."
From an SJ Mercury News report on the same issue: Nine countries, including China, Pakistan and Vietnam, use technology to conceal their censorship, disguising it with techniques such as flashing network error messages.
Funny you should say that. According to evolutionary science, behavior is regulated by appealing to an animal's survival instinct and/or its ability to reproduce. It thus stands to reason that if you want to stop a behavior like honor killings, which is extreme enough on many levels to need an extreme reaction, that "you kill her, we kill you" is the fastest way to appeal to the fundamental instincts of the men who might kill a girl for being "allegedly, a slut."
I know your type. You think violence never solves anything. Unfortunately, there is a whole body of evidence throughout human history that shows that violence is a terribly effective way of controlling violent criminals. If anything, history has shown that when normal society eschews violence, violence overtakes it.
When you build a home, you have to go through the city, obey zoning laws, get permits, get it built according to building safety standards, etc. It is no less YOUR home for it. With censorship you are regulating USAGE - someone is telling you what you can and cannot do with your property. IMO, this devalues the ownership in and of itself; would you pay the same price for a house if you couldn't sleep in it?
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Keep at it, however, I hear3 the Hugo Chaves has a gigantic anti-US propaganda machine just firing up. You could do worse than earn decent money in a decent climate, all for doing what you love.
No thanks, I like the US constitution better and think that it can be enforced.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Unrestrained access to/creation of information can be just as bad as filtering it.
Bearded Dragon
In addition to all of that- assuming there was a foolproof way to completely restrict certain things while allowing other things to get through, I doubt those who would have the ability to implement it would do so; I would think anyone that knowledgeable would have a vested interest in the information remaining free.
I think that's a hell of an assumption. I know lots of very technically capable, bright, creative people, who are borderline amoral (at least when it comes to accepting assignments, not necessarily in their personal or private lives, or how they conduct themselves) and wouldn't have any problem working for virtually anyone who's willing to sign their paycheck.
In fact, I think the majority of really, really bright people that I know are like that, to a certain extent. They might have some personal hangups, but if you presented the (socially) "ugly" task to them as a technical challenge, and it really was a challenge, I know people who'd do it just because it was interesting. To a certain class of person, and I don't necessarily exempt myself here, doing something interesting is more rewarding than doing something good. Not everyone has the patience to be Mother Teresa; a lot of us would much rather be Edward Teller.
To continue that historical example: lots of physicists and engineers -- many very good ones, some of the best -- worked in government labs on nuclear weapons programs; basically building bigger and better bombs. It's pretty tough to come up with a rationalization for why that's a Good Thing, but I can tell you from experience that most people who do work like that don't really even perform the rationalization. (The politicians do that, but I don't think the actual engineers really care that much.) They just focus on the work, because the work is interesting, and allows them a comfortable life; that's more than a lot of people get right there.
If you pay people right, and put them in the right atmosphere (basically closed environment with a lot of other technical people), and present the problem as a purely abstract intellectual challenge, very bright people will do all sorts of stuff that might, taken from a broader perspective, not seem like a social good.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The real question is when are we going to form a world-wide "Rebel Alliance" to combat these bastards?
I'd like to see the world unite against this kind of facist bullshit.
When are we going to take back our government?
Citizen information should be private, government information should be open to scrutiny by its citizens. The administration's got this thing bass-ackwards. Where the fuck were they when they were supposed to be in history class and learning how not to run a country? This has become a facist country over the last 7 years.
And most of all, when are we going to be willing to do more than talk?
Though I'm the one ranting, I don't really have any solid ideas other than so-called "voting" to get a voice. And, I'm sure, this must be controlled by the government to get who they want now. Even then, most Americans can't even tell you where another state is, much less another country, so how can we educate them enough to teach them they're being oppressed by an evil dictator in the making? And being a patriot willing to do more than talk about it will only get you branded as a terrorist and killed. Then they use mis-information to paint you that way to the public and say "see, he was crazy, we need these measures because of people like him".
I'm a reasonable person who is looking for answers like everyone else, but it seems to me we're long past reasonable already. The only thing I can think could fix this is to put an end to lobbyists in Washington that financially manipulate the men and women we, the people "elected" so they can do the job the citizens put them there to do instead of backing companies with the biggest pockets.
I think we're screwed and unfortunately...because of us...so is the rest of the world.
I think you underestimate the human desire for power, wealth, and a challenging task.
how many people would bite the hand that feeds them? That source of knowledge is their livelihood and a major interest for them.Some people want to be the hand that feeds. They want to keep their access to the information, and in addition would like power over other people trying to get that information. Working for the right government, this could make you quite wealthy too. As a bonus, staying ahead of those that try to thwart your efforts to restrict seems like it could be fun game of cat-and-also-cat. It would be one of the most intensely challenging games one could find for a career.
It would be counter-productive towards their own interest.Depends on what one's interest is. If it's making sure everyone has the same level of access and freedom, then yes. If it's getting ahead, positioning oneself in a place of power, having access to the information, and stopping others from becoming better in the field than one, it seems like the most productive move. Again, you're assuming people think that their own good and the good of others are related. I think they are, but there are an astounding number of people who just look out for various small circles around themselves, starting with friends and radiating out to family / political group / nation / species.
if they come up with a way to block all access to one piece of information, someone else can copy that and block THEM from accessing something they need.I think anyone vying for power has to worry that the methods they put in place might be used against them. Obviously people get beyond this fear (or stop themselves from thinking about it) because seeking power is still something people do.
Some people want power. Some people hate other people. Technical people may be less likely to seek power than others, which is what you are suggesting. I think that hypothesis would require a good deal of research. But I would venture to guess that someone with great technical aptitude and a knowledge of networking would want power as much as any other type of person. They are just not as often in a position to grab it.
..it works as well here as for the domain Hilbert was targeting.
"We must know. We will know." - David Hilbert, 1900
Don't Censor Me.
I'm the AACS key.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 wants to be free.
If I had mod points, I'd give them to you. Napier's quote is one of the best analyses of culture clash I've ever heard, and I was madly searching for it when I saw you'd already found it.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
[censored]
Why is it that all of this High and Mighty western egalitarianism vanished in the case of the Rwandan genocide (where the west did practically nothing) and the Apartheid Regime in South Africa? No oil involved, eh?
Gee thanks!
l'Homme n'est Rien l'Oeuvre Tout: Gustave Flaubert to George Sand
we need a new web