Ethiopia Criminalizes VoIP Services

An anonymous reader writes "The Ethiopian government has passed legislation criminalizing the use of VoIP services like Skype and Google Talk. Anyone using these services within the country now faces up to 15 years in prison. 'Ethiopian authorities argue that they imposed these bans because of "national security concerns" and to protect the state's telecommunications monopoly. The country only has one ISP, the state-owned Ethio Telecom, and has been filtering its citizen's Internet access for quite some time now to suppress opposition blogs and other news outlets. ... Reporters Without Borders also reports that Ethio Telecom installed a system to block access to the Tor network, which allows users to surf the Web anonymously. The organization notes that the ISP must be using relatively sophisticated Deep Packet Inspection to filter out this traffic.'"

Comments

National Security

[Hatta]

National Security is a threat to National Security. Anyone who uses National Security as an excuse should be locked up to protect National Security.

Re:Devolution

[JustOK]

Are we not men?

Re:Devolution

[JustOK]

Thank you for the proper English correction.

FTFY

Re:is this the first case....

[JustOK]

no

A preventive measure

[Hentes]

so the prince can't contact people to get his money out.

Re:is this the first case....

[YodasEvilTwin]

Mod parent up. His useful explanation is overshadowed only by the in-depth article he linked to.

backwards

[pak9rabid]

holy FUCK what a backwards country.

Re:Devolution

[flyingsquid]

I felt that your post on internet censorship makes a refreshingly reasonable, coherent, and well-informed argument, without resorting to ridiculous exaggerations or references to 1984 and the Nazis. It suggests a nuanced worldview that goes beyond simple black-and-white thinking about complicated issues.

Please hand in your Slashdot ID.

I guess proper punishment is out the window

[cvtan]

So stealing 1 song worth $1 is worth $155000 in damages and making a phone call over Skype is worth 15 years in prison. Maybe I'll sell drugs or kill people instead; this other stuff is just too dangerous!

Re:In other news out of Ethiopia:

[BSAtHome]

They indeed solved the problem. They have other countries take care of the humanitarian help and provide the "starving children" images so that we all give money.

It is called outsourcing.

[sarcasm tag blew up; could not be contained in a tag]

Re:Devolution

[circletimessquare]

Don't worry man, I'm just an advance Internet Forum Consent Engineer (tm), my assignment is Slashdot Task Force 45D, subsection truth bearer neutralization.

We are aware of the few geniuses such as yourself who have independently stumbled upon the real truth the Bilderberg Agenda (tm) has so desperately worked to keep secret, and we will not let you ruin our plans.

So I must continuously mock you so as to keep the others properly propagandized and placated.

Re:Devolution

[Dishevel]

D.E.V.O.

better idea

[ThatsNotPudding]

fixing this problem is an ongoing effort (the goal is to make Tor look like Firefox).

Make it look like IE6: anyone seeing that would roll their eyes and think the data belongs to a clueless grandmother.

Re:Devolution

[squiggleslash]

Are we not men?

Or vagina?