Google, Yahoo, MS, ‘virus of repression’
p2pnet.net news:- Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are helping to spread the “virus of internet repression,” says Amnesty International.
Warning the Net could, “change beyond all recognition” unless action is taken against the erosion of online freedoms, the “virus” advanced from a handful of countries to dozens of governments, says AI.
The alert, “comes ahead of a conference organised by Amnesty, where victims of repression will outline their plights,” states the BBC.
Challenged on their presence in countries such as China, in the past the companies accused have always maintained that they were simply abiding by local laws, the story points out, going on:
“The Chinese model of an internet that allows economic growth but not free speech or privacy is growing in popularity, from a handful of countries five years ago to dozens of governments today who block sites and arrest bloggers,” said Tim Hancock, Amnesty’s campaign director.
The latest Open Net Initiative report on Net filtering says at least 25 countries now routinely enforce state-mandated net filtering and, “Our research has revealed the growing use of mostly US-based commercial technologies by states and ISPs that filter access to information,” Ron Deibert, director the Citizen Lab and OpenNet Initiative co-principal investigator, told p2pnet recently.
“For example, we have documented the use of the product Smartfilter (made by the US company Secure Computing) in the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Oman, and Saudi Arabia,” he went on, “the US product Fortinet in use in Burma; and the US product Websense in use in Yemen.”
Other countries use the open source product Squidguard and, “The widespread use of these commercial products points to a growing market for filtering services and could suggest an increasing sophistication of Internet filtering practices,” says Deibert.
But, “Filtering was only one aspect of internet repression, the group said,” according to the BBC. Increasingly, AI is seeing “politically motivated” closures of websites and net cafes, as well as threats and imprisonments.
China has just announced it’s increasing restrictions on Net cafes and will license no new venues this year, “while regulators carry out an industry-wide inspection amid official concern that online material is harming young people, the government said,” according to Associated Press.
The Amnesty conference, Some People Think the Internet is a Bad Thing: The Struggle for Freedom of Expression in Cyberspace, will be available as an on-demand replay on Amnesty’s irrepressible.info, re-launched as an information hub for anyone interested in online freedom.
Also See:
BBC – Censorship ‘changes face of net’, June 6, 2007
p2pnet – State-led Net censorship on the rise, May 22, 2007
increasing restrictions – China further lowers Info Curtain, June 6, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
June 6th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Coming soon to YOUR country!