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:ipv6

[ScytheBlade1]

Erm, there is no mandatory encryption with IPv6.

The change from v4 that you're thinking of is IPSEC being a first class citizen to the protocol, as opposed to a backported second class citizen in the networking world.

Not that it doesn't work fine with v4, mind you.

Religion and Internet Filtering

[reporter]

Together with Iran and Turkey, Malaysia will soon be filtering its Internet content. The common thread among all 3 countries is that the majority of their citizens are Muslims.

Approaching this matter from another angle, we see that Vietnam, China, and North Korea censor the Internet. The common thread among all 3 countries is that the majority of their citizens subscribes to Confucianism. Confucianism is a quasi-religion. In it, you are told how and what to think.

Is there a causal relation? Do the governments of countries inhabitated by strongly, religious people tend to filter Internet content?

Note that Russia, despite its brutal form of government, does not filter the Internet. You can write whatever you want in an Internet forum. The Kremlin censors mainly television.

Re:Religion and Internet Filtering

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me the "common thread" between all 6 of the countries you mention is their governments fear dissent. There are plenty of Muslim and Confucian majority countries that do not censor the Internet.

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...)

Isn't this an oxymoron?

[Artifakt]

Seems kind of self contradictory - increased penetration and less pornography.

Malaysian government has already backed off

[erice]

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

Re:How does that work, again?

[raju1kabir]

Well, in the most obvious way in Malaysia, it prevents people from calling attention to all the problems caused by the corrupt relationship between the government and monopolist Telekom Malaysia. TM provides remarkably bad connectivity at remarkably high prices and manages to maintain iron fist control over the wired last mile for 98% of the population due to a weak regulatory agency (SKMM/MCMC) that spends its time sucking TM's dick instead of doing its job. If people can't shine light on this state of affairs due to political censhorship - and mark my words, that is the single and only purpose of the filtering proposal, porn is a red herring - then there's no hope for change.

This has already driven away the much-hoped-for internet economy that Cyberjaya was built, at billions of ringgit in taxpayer expense, to host.

Then there's the simple fact that a filtered internet is a slow and erratic internet. It's true in China and Saudi Arabia and Iran and it will be true here.

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.

Re:Good old Telekom Malaysia

[raju1kabir]

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.

FWIW, the bar scene in KL is much better these days.

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

There was a funny article in the newspaper a few years back where they interviewed (and showed photos of) a bunch of Chinese people who looked sort of Malay-ish, getting them to share their stories of being harassed during Ramadan. Some said they just gave up and ate indoors, others wore giant crucifixes, others turned around and got pre-emptively aggressive with the lunch police.

Re:How does that work, again?

[raju1kabir]

You realize people dealt with this soft of problem before the Internet existed right? People actually ... talked to each other ... rather than twiting it up or facebooking.

People can talk to the people they know, and the people in their community, sure. But that is very limiting:

• No possibility for anonymity
• Limited number of viewpoints
• Limited access to externally verifiable information

The internet has transformed politics in Malaysia, by bringing people all over the country together based on their shared views rather than based solely on whom they happened to live nearby. It's allowed people to have open, frank discussions that previously they would only be able to have with their closest confidants. It's allowed facts and evidence to be brought to general public attention which would previously have been squelched by the BN-owned mass media.

Of course humans can survive without the internet. But in my mind there is no question that it has enabled a transformative level of communication which we are only beginning to see the full impact of.