Malaysian Government Wants Internet Filtering

adewolf tips news that the government of Malaysia is looking into the development of an internet filtering program. According to a Reuters report, "A vibrant Internet culture has contributed to political challenges facing the government, which tightly controls mainstream media and has used sedition laws and imprisonment without trial to prosecute a blogger." The Malaysian government insists that such a filter would only be used to block pornography, though critics of the plan expect it would be wielded as a political tool, censoring websites that are critical of the current administration. "An industry source says the government could impose the filters late this year or in 2010, coinciding with the rollout of a high-speed broadband network run by Telekom Malaysia. Malaysia aims to increase broadband penetration to half of all homes by 2010 as part of its drive to boost economic efficiency."

Comments

Re:Burn, karma, burn.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Malaysia is merely thinking about mandary filtering?
In Singapore, we already have mandatory filtering since (roughly) 1996!

(Goodbye, Karma...)

Malaysian government has already backed off

[erice]

http://www.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idUKKLR48361520090807

Good old Telekom Malaysia

[DNS-and-BIND]

I was on a project with Telekom Malaysia back in '01, went to Kuala Lumpur for a month. Random observations, in no particular order: Telekom is pretty good, other than falling for my company's crappy spiel about our product that barely worked and which could bring an E10000 to its knees with a load of 100 messages per minute. KL was a pretty modern place, with big buildings, good restaurants, shops, etc. The ringgit was set at 4.25 to the dollar (the explanation was that it had protected the Malay economy against George Soros' currency manipulation that helped to cause the Asian Financial Crisis.) This had the odd effect that all the prices were generally what I would expect in America, only 4.25 times less. A plate of [whatever] plus fries and drink at the mall food court would be 5.75, only in local currency, not in dollars (this was back when the USD was actually worth something overseas.) KL was also my first experience with Asian fake markets...hell yeah I came back with a suitcase full of CDs and Kung Fu VCDs (I didn't have a DVD player or DVD drive at the time IIRC.) The bars there sucked, but I suppose that comes with the territory, being an Islamic country and all. I mean, I wouldn't expect the bar scene in Cow's Asshole, Alabama to be thriving, either. There were ads in the newspaper for apartments and jobs, specifically listing the religions, ages, and sexes of the people eligible to apply. Seriously, the ads would say something like "30 sq meters, private bath, window with good view of sunset, unmarried Muslim girls 18-30 only, call 03-77445678." This was quite shocking to me coming from America, with its history of rigidly enforcing civil rights, at gunpoint if necessary. But Malaysia has rigid enforcement if its religious laws - every citizen's national ID card has a field where it says "religion". A friend of mine related this anecdote: he was in Malaysia to visit the factory, at some restaurant somewhere with the factory people. The factory manager got a tap on her shoulder from the waiter, and she had to go up to the front of the restaurant. She was gone for some time, which caused my buddy to become concerned. She returned in due course, explaining that the JAWI (religious police) came into the restaurant, and she had left her ID card in her car. She had to go all the way out and get it, to prove that she was a Hindu, and therefore not subject to jail for eating during daytime (it was Ramadan at the time of his visit). The JAWI apologized and said that she looked Muslim.

I'm not surprised a country like this has decided to join China by firewalling the outside world. They have a lot to lose (by their standards) and little to gain (again, by their standards) by allowing unfettered access. And since post-modern thought says that there is no truth, only differing points of view, who can disagree with this decision? No matter how you come down on the censorship debate, there is always another equally valid point of view on the opposite side.