"Liberated" Tunisia Still Censoring Websites 108
In Tunisia, where dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted one year ago amid hopes for a new era of freedom, the high court will decide on Wednesday whether to censor foreign pornographic websites in accordance with local law. Facebook pages that "call for violence" may also be blocked. Conveniently, all the machinery for censoring the Internet in Tunisia is already in place, having been installed under Ben Ali's dictatorship for the purposes of censoring and spying on Tunisian citizens (and, for a while, phishing their Facebook passwords). The irony recalls the situation in Iraq in 2009, when the government announced plans to start censoring foreign websites -- to which Iraqi citizens complained that they thought censorship would end with the fall of Saddam's regime. Actually, apart from the three outlier countries of Turkey, Israel and Lebanon, pornography remains illegal in every Middle Eastern country (and some conservative African nations), including the recently "liberated" ones including Egypt, Iraq and Tunisia. (Although, Iraq's street market in pornography thrives as long as the police have better things to do.)
I'm against such censorship in principle -- I think that even the right to publish and access pornography counts as a fundamental human right. But I think we have to take what progress we can get, and censoring just pornography and calls to violence, is a big improvement over censoring pornography and dissident political speech, which is the norm in most non-"liberated" Middle Eastern countries like Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Syria blocks foreign opposition sites like All4Syria.info, Iran blocks Facebook and YouTube to keep dissidents from posting or viewing anti-government material, and Saudi Arabia blocks Reporters Without Borders and filters the Amnesty International report on human rights in Saudi Arabia (but not the rest of the Amnesty International site!).
Saudi Arabia blocking the Amnesty International report on human rights in their country (while leaving the rest of the site unblocked), in particular, seems like the kind of thing that a government would do more as a "fuck you" to human rights activists, than a means to achieve a practical goal. For one thing, most of the facts in the human rights report about Saudi Arabia -- about sex discrimination and lack of political and religious freedom -- are already well known to the people who live there. And secondly, what percent of the citizens of a country would ever read the Amnesty International report on human rights in that country, even if it were not blocked? How many Americans even know that Amnesty puts out an annual report about human rights violations in the United States? So it seems more like a symbolic move to remind everyone who's in charge. For all the disappointment in the lack of progress for free speech in post-"liberation" countries, the non-"liberated" ones are indeed worse.
As for the Tunisian proposal to censor "calls to violence", I wouldn't always be against that, even in principle. In most countries, direct incitements to violence can be considered illegal (it depends on what you say and, of course, on what judge you get). In a developing country rife with ethnic tensions, even greater restrictions on calls to violence could be justified. When you finally watched Hotel Rwanda , weren't you hoping someone would bust in on that radio DJ telling everyone to kill Tutsis in the middle of a civil war, and blow him to hell? The biggest problem with a rule against "calls to violence" is that the government could stretch the definition to silence political speech. But it's possible to keep that kind of abuse in check, as has mostly been achieved in the U.S. For that, what you need is an independent judiciary, not an abolishment of all rules against calls to violence.
So the free-speech situation in "liberated" Tunisia may be nothing to write home about, but it sounds much better than it used to be, when writing home to complain about it could get you arrested. A Wall Street Journal article from July 2011 describes how, under Ben Ali's dictatorship, Tunisian cyber-activist Slim Amamou had been imprisoned and abused by the police for calling for peaceful demonstrations. Post-revolution, he was freed and asked to join the interim government, where the strictest restriction placed on him was to "stop sending Twitter messages during internal government meetings to his 25,000 followers". They may not have their porn, but that's still progress.
Of course, if someone in Tunisia wants to circumvent the government filters (using tools like proxy sites, VPNs, Tor, UltraSurf, Psiphon, etc.) and get to a porn site, more power to them. I just wouldn't make it a priority to set aside resources to help them get it. Not while there are Iranians who need help getting around the latest restrictions blocking them from Facebook and Gmail.
Two caveats. First, if someone wants to sell circumvention services to Tunisians who just want to get around the porn blocker, that doesn't count as "setting aside resources", so that's a perfectly noble endeavor. In fact, given the economies of scale in the circumvention business, selling to Tunisians could help to bring the price down for other users, including users in countries like Saudi Arabia where the government does engage in political filtering, and where circumvention services could be a tool for social change. Second, providing circumvention services (free or paid) to Tunisians, does probably make it less likely that the new government would revert to political censorship, knowing that many of its citizens have the tools to beat it, even if those tools are only currently used to access porn sites. So to that extent, setting aside resources to provide circumvention services in Tunisia might be a worthwhile cause.
Still, I think it's a lot less important than using circumvention tools to fight political censorship in truly autocratic countries like Iran. For the next generation of proxy servers that I'm rolling out, I'm working on setting aside some of them just for Iranian IP addresses. Even if Iranians just use them to get on Facebook, that's still contributes more to advancing the cause of social democracy, than Tunisians using them to get on Playboy.
What world do you live in? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is the word liberated in quotes in the article title? Sure, Libya is free from Ghaddafi (sp), but it still is and will remain a Muslim country, where such censorship would be normal.
Only small children or political naivetes would be surprised at this.
Google this (Score:2, Insightful)
"Muslim brotherhood" . this is the organization behind all those 'revolutions' within n. africa and arabia. no exceptions : in libya they got the upper hand and immediately moved to sharia. in egypt, they were the main driving force, but was not the majority, hence they only were able to 'call' for a sharia government. in syria, they are the ones perpetrating the revolution. all of the 'revolutions' involve usage of social media and internet as you can remember - they were prepared for this. they are known to be working in libya for a decade now.
Re:A limit to censoring (Score:5, Insightful)
So censoring should not exist except for when it should? And where do you draw the line on child pornography? In the US and many other western countries, it's around 17 or 18 years old, but what about countries that might consider you an adult at 16? 14? 12? or at the onset of puberty? Do hosting companies have to censor based on the viewer's location? Once you add the "except", it gets a whole lot more complicated with something that crosses so many national and cultural lines.
As Long as Democracy Remains Intact ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Muslim brotherhood" . this is the organization behind all those 'revolutions' within n. africa and arabia. no exceptions : in libya they got the upper hand and immediately moved to sharia. in egypt, they were the main driving force, but was not the majority, hence they only were able to 'call' for a sharia government. in syria, they are the ones perpetrating the revolution. all of the 'revolutions' involve usage of social media and internet as you can remember - they were prepared for this. they are known to be working in libya for a decade now.
Okay, I Googled it, found the Wikipedia page and found their response to your criticism interesting [wikipedia.org]:
According to authors writing in the Council on Foreign Relations magazine Foreign Affairs: "At various times in its history, the group has used or supported violence and has been repeatedly banned in Egypt for attempting to overthrow Cairo's secular government. Since the 1970s, however, the Egyptian Brotherhood has disavowed violence and sought to participate in Egyptian politics." Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor, calls it "conservative and non-violent". The Brotherhood has condemned terrorism and the 9/11 attacks.
The Brotherhood itself denounces the "catchy and effective terms and phrases" like "fundamentalist" and "political Islam" which it claims are used by "Western Media" to pigeonhole the group, and points to its "15 Principles" for an Egyptian National Charter, including "freedom of personal conviction... opinion... forming political parties... public gatherings... free and fair elections..."
Yeah you used that scary word "sharia" and then oh god no they're Muslim. They must be evil. Well, you know, I know some of the other countries in the world see our Republican party as conservative and threatening to enact similar scary laws against gay marriage and even are seen as violent war mongers.
But as long as Democracy is in place and the elections are rigged and voters aren't threatened or coerced then we have the ability to change that. At one point in our own nation's history, people were voting in politicians who were okay with slavery! Imagine that!
Some people in these country want sharia law and if that's what their politicians are running on and win on then that's how democracy is supposed to work. Just so long as the voters can always change it.
I know it's hard for Americans to grasp this but "Democracy" doesn't mean that whoever you think is best should win the vote in foreign countries.
Re:A limit to censoring (Score:4, Insightful)
And for blasphemy against Allah, of course.
Liberated Tunisia == Islamic Tunisia (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What world do you live in? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have been of the opinion that the "Arab Spring" has been a bit of a damp squib - Egypt is still rioting, the President left and the military took over, Tunisia elected an Islamist party, Libya has descended into much the same (the "winners" are taking actions against the "losers", to the point where they have forcibly emptied entire towns which supported Gadaffi and will not allow the former occupants to return, creating a large migrant internal refuge crisis which didn't exist before).
It certainly doesn't look like it would be the big thing everyone hoped it would be.
Re:A limit to censoring (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo. This is the reality.
The minute you make an excuse for when censorship's okay, you can now bend that excuse to fit "Anything you don't like". Exactly as you said.
So now it becomes "we think that $antitunisia.com is supporting child pornography". Bam. Website down, even though it's just dissidence.
Hate it or not, *NOTHING* should be censored from the internet. Is child porn illegal to have? yes. That doesn't mean it simply can't be on the internet - it just means the people involved are easier to find. $childporn.ftp = oh hai police.
It is this argument (preventing child porn) which is used regularly in reverse to take away people's rights. Make a censorship bill called "preventing child pornography" even though it says "without judicial review, and when suspected", and bam - you have DMCA for anything. That is in fact part of how DMCA was pushed for.
Re:Google this (Score:5, Insightful)
There never was an "Arab Spring". There was an Islamic Spring. You had to be truly naive to think that liberal democracy was going to sweep North Africa... and apparently, a lot of people in the West were. What happened there was more comparable to Iran in 1979 than the American Colonies of 1776. They tossed out secular dictators for religious rule. If that's what they want, then by all means, that's what they should have. Majorities should mean something. But we should stop kidding ourselves that what's going on over there is about freedom as the West defines it.
Re:A limit to censoring (Score:5, Insightful)
The term 'irony' doesn't even begin to describe the situation there.