Slashdot Mirror
Censorship is Changing the Face of the Internet
Lucas123 writes "Amnesty International is warning that the Internet "could change beyond all recognition" because state-sponsored censorship has spread from a handful of countries to dozens of governments that apply mandated net filtering, and because companies such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have remained complicit, according to a BBC story. '"More and more governments are realising the utility of controlling what people see online and major internet companies, in an attempt to expand their markets, are colluding in these attempts,"' said Tim Hancock, Amnesty's campaign director."
They did get Slashdot.
I wonder if, at least in the United States, the internet and its "freedoms" are already too interlaced in people's lives for a censorship program to be successfully implemented now. What would happen if suddenly school students could not get reliable information on subjects like Guantanamo? Or, if John Q. Public can't get his free porno? Also, what would large media networks do--especially those with other outlets besides their website, such as television stations--if their content is censored online, but not elsewhere?
Even if it were more altruistic, like censorship of terrorist web pages or even malware sites, there would be a huge outcry from an otherwise free media.
I decided to stop stealing cynical quotes to use as a signature line.
The key to preventing these kinds of issues is education. As others have pointed out, most filtering is only going to stop the casual user. If people realize that there are other ways to communicate freely, they will do so. Imagine sending thousands of OLPC's to China loaded up with Tor, SSL, and a healthy primer on network communication protocols. The "Great Firewall of China" starts looking like swiss cheese.
Yes... but given this is the 10 millionth time someone has made this obvious joke it's still redundant regardless of what time it was posted at.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Why do they drag Google into this mess? I just did a search for a particular social taboo for some research I'm doing and the first thing that came up is dated April 4, 1999. No censorship here! No way! Those high profile cases plastered all over the news last summer did not happen at all according to google! Google is the answer! You get old out dated results for your research! Use it everyday!
One giant piece of missing information is that all three internet giants refused the public Amnesty International debate. It's too bad they won't clarify their position as an aid to repressive governments. As the Register noted, "no news is good news" when you have something to hide. Because they refuse to meet their critics in the open, we are all left with speculation and stink. As all of us are dependent on these three companies to one extent or another, how censored is our own world view?
The answer is to help each other and report what you see. Alternatives, like Slashdot and blogs exist for this reason. The majority of us still get most of our "news" from "mainstream" sources but we don't have to. As long as the internet remains a free place we can inform each other of what's happening.
This is good news for small newspapers, if they take advantage of it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What country do you live in. Here in the USA we have a Republic.
Call me crazy {'cause I am...} but I'd always thought America was a "democratic republic"...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
My Oxford American Dictionary says that democracy is "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives" (or "a state governed in such a way"); and republic is "a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch."
Note, however, that dictionary definitions do not settle arguments. Meanings are determined by usage, and dictionaries are records of usage (and fallible ones). But, when all the media in your country routinely use the word democracy in a way that contradicts the rule you're stating there, well, it's your rule that's mistaken, not the people who use the word in violation of it. This is just Linguistics 101.
Are you adequate?
Then I guess I'll call you crazy. America is a Constitutional Republic.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Places like China have been lacking free speech since before the internet existed, and they still lack it.
The article isn't talking about places like China. It is talking about the Chinese idea of blanket censorship spreading to other "free" western nations. It is scary. Here, in the land of tin men and wizards, there was a crazy religious nutter senator in the deep south who tried to impose a bill that would force ISPs to censor content that _he_ deemed to be filth. The bill actually got a lot of debate and IIRC was used as a bargaining tool for and against other legislation. As a result it did get a lot of support, specially from the think of the children brigade.
The idea of censorship for control is alarming and the fact that the Internet has become such a backbone of modern information gathering gives gumbiments the power to control what we (yes, you and me) can and can't see or even to poison what reliable information is out there. It's alarmist and it's paranoid, but it is possible and I guarantee they do think about it!
I drink to make other people interesting!
That's why the corporations decided to buy the government. They picked the first choice and then infiltrated the government ... gradually a heirarchy -- an Oligarchy -- developed as people went back and forth between government and the private sector. The Oligarchy was forged as rich men learned to scratch each other's back, even if it meant screwing over the public. In time, hidden groups formed, old groups changed and factions struggled for dominance behind the scenes. Our rulers (the real ones, not the puppets they put in front of you) long ago decided to control the public. Control of the internet is a logical extension of that desire for control.
Electric Monkey Pants
And the states that are censoring will have the truth used upon them in the suppository fashion.
Exactly. Google, Yahoo! and MSN are not the entire internet. There are other search engines, other portals, other content providers. Even if all the major players kowtow to repressive governments in order to do business in those countries, there will still be billions of groups and individuals who aren't motivated by greed and/or fear.
Keyword filtering can be defeated by SSL or by using alternate encodings (EG base64/rot13/etc content that gets transparently decoded via javascript on the client browser). DNS and IP level blocking can be defeated with proxies, remailers, IM bots, etc. People will always find a way around content blocks faster than those blocks can adapt.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Why would you think that?
It hasn't been happening so far. http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/ap_bias.h tml
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
In his 1980 book "Inquest on an Organization Above all Suspicion: Amnesty International," French journalist Hughes Keraly exposed the truth regarding a left-wing bias that has always swirled around Amnesty International.
His exposure of communist infiltration, while no surprise, is sad given that Amnesty has, indeed, done significant work in exposing human rights abuses around the world.
Unfortunately, their work appears to have been tainted by an agenda that magnifies and in some cases manufactures the abuses of freedom-oriented regimes while minimizing and ignoring the abuses of the regimes of the totalitarian left.
This is instructive regarding the danger of placing monitoring responsibilities into the hands of a so-called "Non-Governmental Organization" (NGO) like Amnesty International, which affiliates with the United Nations.
This affiliation, in effect, grants this un-elected and un-accountable bureaucracy an appearance of authority and legality.
Keraly, a sympathizer of Amnesty International at the time, went to Chile in 1979 to search for 10 men whom Amnesty had reported as having disappeared as a result of their opposition to the government of Gen. Agusto Pinochet.
To his astonishment, Keraly found all 10 men living openly and unmolested.
It is interesting to note that Amnesty had previously failed to investigate the activities of the Stalinist Allende regime, one of the most brutal in Latin American history.
Instead, Amnesty engaged in an unrelenting 20 year propaganda campaign against Pinochet, while he was struggling to restore democracy and prosperity to his grateful nation and while he defended his people against communist trained, armed, and supported militias as well as an influx of communist agitators from all over the world.
After making this startling discovery, Keraly proceeded to investigate Amnesty International headquarters in London where he discovered that Amnesty director Derek Roebuck was an active Communist.
In his study of thousands of files, he discovered such things as terrorists, working with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin listed as "victims of political oppression."
At the same time, Amnesty had done nothing to investigate the torture and concentration camps of the Soviet Union, Cambodia, or Cuba.
In fact, the "human rights" group had little to say at the time regarding leftist abuses occurring in the late 1970's.
This was a time when the world leftist behemoth was quite active in its policy of liquidation and support for international terrorism.
Amnesty International hasn't changed it stripes much in the ensuing decades with their support of such things as the Bolshevik inspired "U.N. Declaration of Human Rights," with its call for a transfer of capital from the productive western societies to third world dictators and its guarantee of the right to employment, a typical Stalinist idea.
Now they are championing the cause of Muslims who have experienced "discrimination" in the US since Sept. 11 and the al Quada prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Their website "In the Wake of September 11, 2001, Justice and Human Rights" is heavy with concern regarding "Upholding international human rights and humanitarian law as the US responds to the attacks" while it says nothing about the leftist Palestinian Authority and its terrorist offshoots.
As is par for the course, America is under the microscope while the politically oppressive but generally leftist Islamic world is ignored.
The vital lesson here is that un-elected bureaucracies, with outlets all over the world, cannot be trusted to investigate human rights abuses in any official capacity.
If they chose to present themselves as a private organization conducting atrocity propaganda to further the goals of the international left, which is world domination, than Amnesty International would at least be honest and acceptable as such.
The problem is when organizations such as Amnesty seek to pass themselves off as objective and even-handed while they use their quazi-public stature as a UN NGO to further an aura of authority.
This claim of authority is derived from communist sympathizers and from an international bureaucratic elite that also clearly skews left.
- We elect no president per se, as in, no one guy who is seen as being "in charge" of the country -- we elect federal councils ("Bundesrat") with several members to each, all of which are in charge of different areas of government but can also make decisions as a unity (through debate and internal voting).
- Things the government cannot reach a conclusive decision on are put to public vote in the form of a "yes/no" question, and the public gets to decide.
- The government must publically announce all its planned actions, and anyone is free to collect signatures against anything the government does. If you can get a sufficient amount of signatures, the planned action must be put to public vote, and again, it's the people that decide.
- We have very strong regional governments, so most day-to-day political decisions are made for each region individually, not forced upon people by the federal government.
- We have a choice of more than two significant political parties.
- There are strong (but not unreasonable) laws in place limiting the influence of lobbyists and big business upon the government. Of course, big business can still influence politics, but in order to do so, they have to convince the people who will actually be affected, not some random politician.
- This entire system forces politicians to stay in close dialogue with the public, so things like a government minister updating his personal blog every day are absolutely no rarity.
This system has worked extremely well for us for decades and decades, and continues to do so every day. There is nothing about this system that limits its feasibility to Switzerland per se, so I find your assessment that "this is the closest we're ever going to get to democracy" a little... short-sighted.Basilisk Digital