Global Internet Censorship On the Rise

An anonymous reader writes "State-led internet censorship is on the rise around the world. According to a study conducted by the Open Net Initiative and reported by the BBC, some 25 of 41 countries surveyed were filtering at least some content. Skype and Google Maps were two of the most often-censored sites, according to the article. 'The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms. The report said: 'In a growing number of states around the world, internet filtering has huge implications for how connected citizens will be to the events unfolding around them, to their own cultures, and to other cultures and shared knowledge around the world.'"

Big deal

Governments have done this with newspapers and other media for ever.

Re:Big deal

Yah, but this is the Internet. It's Censorship 2.0!

Re:Big deal

What worries me is that the "Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it" axiom might be becoming less true.

Nonsense! It's just as true as ever. What happened when Turkey blocked Youtube? Instructions were quickly posted on how to get around the block or download the offending clip from another site. What happened when the AACS owners tried to abuse the DMCA to stop the cracked key from being distributed? The key ended up on nearly every site on the Internets!

Even in highly oppressive regions like China, the users of the Internet are finding new and creative ways to circumvent the Great Firewall. Simply put, there is no way of stopping the information on the 'net. It's like the underground books that were distributed during Communism in Russia: They kept popping up no matter how much the Soviets tried to quash them.

Totalitarian governments (or even democratic/republic governments trying to suppress information) are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The only way to stop the flow of information is to yank the plug. But if they yank the plug or fail to install it in the first place, it's a guarantee that the country will collapse from a failure to be competitive in the Global market. So governments try and find a compromise by suppressing information on the Internet. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't really work all that well. ;-)

Re:Big deal

I doubt those who would have the ability to implement it would do so; I would think anyone that knowledgeable would have a vested interest in the information remaining free.

Are you suggesting that technical aptitude naturally disposes one towards wanting to keep information free?

The idea that intelligence disposes one towards protecting freedoms is silly to me. While I would like to believe that anyone intelligent takes my position - freedoms should be protected over security or power - I realize this view has little basis in history. While many of the most intelligent people have pushed in for freedom, I'm sure a much larger number through humanity's history have taken authoritarian stance.

Beyond that, the knowledge you speak of - the ability to completely block access to certain information - is a very technical type of knowledge. Does that technical aptitude have any relation to one's political alignment? I doubt it.

Don't get me wrong. It would be nice if there were a stance in these matters that was the indisputably more intelligent choice, and that technical aptitude always went hand-in-hand with that type of social intelligence. But I have a feeling that those with such technical aptitude are usually put to use by those with a greater social intelligence and that their political alignments have little to do with their smarts.

Power, wealth and a challeng are human desires

I think you underestimate the human desire for power, wealth, and a challenging task.

how many people would bite the hand that feeds them? That source of knowledge is their livelihood and a major interest for them.

Some people want to be the hand that feeds. They want to keep their access to the information, and in addition would like power over other people trying to get that information. Working for the right government, this could make you quite wealthy too. As a bonus, staying ahead of those that try to thwart your efforts to restrict seems like it could be fun game of cat-and-also-cat. It would be one of the most intensely challenging games one could find for a career.

It would be counter-productive towards their own interest.

Depends on what one's interest is. If it's making sure everyone has the same level of access and freedom, then yes. If it's getting ahead, positioning oneself in a place of power, having access to the information, and stopping others from becoming better in the field than one, it seems like the most productive move. Again, you're assuming people think that their own good and the good of others are related. I think they are, but there are an astounding number of people who just look out for various small circles around themselves, starting with friends and radiating out to family / political group / nation / species.

if they come up with a way to block all access to one piece of information, someone else can copy that and block THEM from accessing something they need.

I think anyone vying for power has to worry that the methods they put in place might be used against them. Obviously people get beyond this fear (or stop themselves from thinking about it) because seeking power is still something people do.

Some people want power. Some people hate other people. Technical people may be less likely to seek power than others, which is what you are suggesting. I think that hypothesis would require a good deal of research. But I would venture to guess that someone with great technical aptitude and a knowledge of networking would want power as much as any other type of person. They are just not as often in a position to grab it.

Re:Not even close to true.

To a certain class of person, and I don't necessarily exempt myself here, doing something interesting is more rewarding than doing something good.

This struck me as a very insightful comment. It explains one way that people can rationalize doing something that, if they were able to step back and look at the big picture, or with enough hindsight, they would know it is wrong to do. Yet they do it, and while doing it, think it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Sometimes, interesting means evil. A certain Chinese saying comes to mind: "May you live in interesting times."

Re:Big deal

Just because something has always happened, doesn't make it right.
The reason this is different is that we aren't talking about newspapers, or television, or whatever, we are talking about The Internet. The Internet belongs to the people, not to the government, or, as some would like to make it, to big business. It is Ours.

And we want it to stay that way.

Re:Big deal

It's ironic that you wrote this just as I was writing the post below it about how some people's illusions are about to be shattered.

Please stop and think about this. Who owns the vast amounts of hardware infrastructure that have been created to support it? Who defines the standards and protocols on which it is based? How does an individual gain access to the Internet? If the Internet really belongs to the people, why do governments and commercial organisations dominate the answer to every one of those basic questions?

Re:Big deal

Fair enough. However, in that case, I can't help noting that most things run "by the people" do have some degree of order associated with them, in the form of governments and legal systems. At least in principle, these represent the interests of the people as a whole; being run for the people does not imply anarchy.

Right now, it is precisely the lawless nature of the Internet (in that it is unreasonably difficult to enforce accepted laws there, even when pretty much everyone agrees they are reasonable laws) that leads to problems like spam, defamation, phishing expeditions, and all the other bad stuff that I'm sure everyone except those benefiting personally could happily live without.

My argument in discussions like this has often been that trying to protect the Internet in its current state is not the best way forward, because its current state is broken in some fundamental ways, and support from more traditional government and laws will help to combat some of that abuse. What we should be doing, IMHO, is campaigning for principles like freedom of information and due process to be considered as relevant for everyone on the Internet as they are in many countries already, so that whatever common system of regulation and government ultimately does come out of it, the fundamental principles are fair and reasonable.

There is no question in my mind that a completely open system like the Internet will come to be more regulated, whether everyone likes it or not, for the same reasons that societies have developed laws to preserve order. What concerns me is that along with that regulation should come the same protection of individual rights and freedoms that free societies have also developed to avoid their laws becoming too restrictive.

Re:Big deal

Right now, it is precisely the lawless nature of the Internet (in that it is unreasonably difficult to enforce accepted laws there, even when pretty much everyone agrees they are reasonable laws) that leads to problems like spam, defamation, phishing expeditions, and all the other bad stuff that I'm sure everyone except those benefiting personally could happily live without.

It is *precisely* the "lawless" state of the internet today that makes it useful as a tool for freedom (and flexible as a basis for building things).

Spam is a technical problem with the design of the SMTP protocol, and a really interesting social issue re: the appropriateness of push marketing in any medium designed for 1 to 1 personal communication. But, rather than trying to fix technical problems with laws, let's let SMTP as it is continue to die it's slow death.

Defamation is nothing new to the internet. You could always distribute anonymous pamphlets about people. Sure, more people can participate in both reading and writing, but the effect will go down as more people realize that talk is cheap. More importantly, Defamation is in no way an important enough issue to consider restraining the essential liberty that is freedom of communication.

Phishing and other scams are no more interesting to me than pickpockets in open air markets (where that sort of thing is common). Sure, it sucks when you aren't prepared and lose your wallet - but all the locals will correctly just laugh at you and tell you to be more alert next time. There will always be people out to scam you / take your stuff - one of the key skills to operate in human society is to avoid being the victim. I give the pickpocket example for a very good reason - this isn't a new class of problem, it's been solved, and it isn't the government's responsibility to protect you from everything.

Re:Big deal

Governments have done this with newspapers and other media for ever.

To varying degrees, yes. I think the main news here is that some people's illusions are about to be shattered, because for some reason they thought this couldn't happen on the Internet.

I can't count how many debates I've had on Slashdot, where the other guy relied on something like Internet anonymity or hosting dubiously ethical content offshore to back up an argument. Sometimes the reasons were legitimate, and I was arguing that they should be more afraid of government or big corporate intervention making things worse. Sometimes it was more the other way around, as they flippantly argued that their "right" to defame someone anonymously (or to copy music illegally, or...) could not be stopped, as if the Internet is some all-powerful weapon of the people against oppressive governments everywhere.

IMHO, it would be better for all concerned if the reality was clearer, and I think this sort of eye-catching statistic makes it very clear indeed that the Internet isn't some brave new world, and for better or worse it will always have risks and opportunities similar to those of any other communications medium. We should regulate (or not), legislate (or not), standardise (or not) and seek international co-operation (or not) accordingly.

I was going to ask my Chinese colleague ...

I emailed a Chinese colleague to get his comment on this story -- but the link is blocked. Oh well...

Re:I was going to ask my Chinese colleague ...

Well, I'm reading this from China, where slashdot is NOT blocked. Yes the BBC article is, but then most BBC stuff is, but the original Open Net initiative isn't.

Good a place as any to throw this one out...

The ideas set forth in the First Amendment of the US Constitution should ideally apply to all citizens of the world. Discuss.

Re:Good a place as any to throw this one out...

The ideas of the US Constitution (not just the 4th amendment) where based upon the philosophical ideals of Europe at the time. These ideas have largely been accepted by the WESTERN world as the ideal standard of living (with some notable exceptions such as the right to bear arms).

It is important to note that the social norms of many cultures are not compatible with western ideals. This causes conflict when the west tries to use its power (economic and military) to force its ideals on the rest of the world. The irony is that one of the most powerful ideas expressed by the US constitution that has been adopted by the western world is the concept of freedom of choice (association, religion, expression are all choices we make). By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.

Re:Good a place as any to throw this one out...

It is important to note that the social norms of many cultures are not compatible with western ideals. This causes conflict when the west tries to use its power (economic and military) to force its ideals on the rest of the world. The irony is that one of the most powerful ideas expressed by the US constitution that has been adopted by the western world is the concept of freedom of choice (association, religion, expression are all choices we make). By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.

Look closer. We aren't exactly sending in the B-52s to airdrop loads of McMuffins, LOTR DVDs, sneakers, and twinkies onto the Noble Primitive Peoples who are Honoring the Sacred Traditions of Their Ancestors. It's a pull situation much more than a push. Western culture, simply put, is addictive.

It's the Noble Primitive leaders that don't like this, because the Sacred Traditions are invariably religious-authoritarian.

From over here we only hear about people bewailing Western culture, but we aren't hearing the real opinions of the Noble Primitive People themselves.

Tell that to women in India!

Indian women today are better off because General Napier had the gall to impose his culture on Indian men who thought it was perfectly natural to burn a wife alive when her husband died. Today, Indian women don't have to worry about being lit up like a firecracker because their husband bought the farm. How many normal Indian women would seriously say, "damn that British fascist for not allowing our men to incinerate perfectly healthy Indian women like they were kindlin?"

Part of the Western tradition is a belief that there is a natural law, and that this law dictates many things that other cultures don't respect. It is a religious belief in many respects, but it is the idea that there is a universal order that mandates liberty, accountability and peace, rather than subordination of the individual to the herd.

The world would be better off if American soldiers in Iraq strung up the men involved in honor killings from the nearest object capable of lynching a man, if it castrated and otherwise humiliated those who engage in female circumcision and if it did similar acts of "cultural imperialism." Why? Because no one ever gave these victims a choice whether or not they wanted to be oppressed, tormented, mutilated and murdered.

Re:Good a place as any to throw this one out...

By forcing western values on the rest of the world we are in effect violating them ourselves by not giving other cultures a choice.

Cultures aren't some delicate flower than can be crushed when a more popular once rolls around. It's a dynamic thing. Cultures aren't equal and aren't universally valuable. They are secondary traits of large groups of people. They will naturally mutate and hcange over time, drawing bits of neigboring cultures and dominant cultures into themselves. Those that are dying should problably die. Some cultures are more productive, more robust, more attractive and it's up to those who exist within that culture to ensure it survives. Culture aren't human beings. They are body of ideas. They should have no rights.

Don't agree!

I must respectfully disagree. I'm a German, and Germany has placed considerably limits on so-called "free speech"; and I'm fine with that. Why should I give holocaust deniers and nazi propagandist the right to be heard? And please don't trot out the old canard of "they'll be after your free speech next" - those limits have been in place since about 1946, and I don't know of any case when they were abused to censor other political speech. Feel free to enlighten me with examples to the contrary.

Re:Don't agree!

Why should I give holocaust deniers and nazi propagandist the right to be heard?

H

How 'bout you tell me why they shouldn't? Do you really think that Germany is a swarming mass of anti-Semitism, just waiting for a leader to come along and light the fire of the Fourth Reich? I would like to think that most Germans would be a tad offended by your implied sentiment - that if they heard a bit of Nazi propaganda, they'd start rounding up the Jews. We have Nazi propagandists here in America, and we don't censor them - we laugh at them (not that we're a shining beacon of freedom or anything ourselves; we just "get it" when it comes to political speech).

Let's try: Why should I give (fill in the blank) the right to be heard? Because it's a right - a fundamental right, just like the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold those truths to be *self* evident - that means they don't need to be justified. If your "culture" disagrees, then your culture is wrong.

O Rly

The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms.

If Skype is one of the most frequently filtered, then it's also about money. To me, this implies the telco's are able to exert pressure on governments as well as ISP's to either limit or block Skype traffic outright.

another article

i just finished reading this on another article [technologyreview.com]. what a coincidink!

/me shoots self in the face for saying coincidink

Gee...

It's sure too bad we didn't turn the control of the Internet over to the UN, like you guys all wanted...

Re:Gee...

Please spare us your random, unsupported UN-bashing. Right now, under US leadership, (a) the censorship is widespread (as TFA demonstrates), and (b) the US-based authorities have demonstrated a willingness to impose their own values on others (the .xxx domain to give one obvious example). How exactly could having the Internet under UN control be worse on either count?

I always said it would become a weapon of tyranny

It's axiomatic that the web will eventually become a weapon of tyranny. Through selective censorship and the general sense that it's so unreliable from an accuracy perspective and therefore easy to manipulate and spin, the web will be used for agendas and the geek era will be over.

Too late

The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Censorship simply causes the information to flood fill to other areas. Increasing censorship gives more TOR, more freenet, more "open proxies" etc.

 

It Isn't Just Censorship - Monitoring Is Also Huge

There is another aspect to this - instead of blocking, some governments monitor. By monitoring, they can profile people who either openly oppose the regime du jour and then arrest/detain/harass as they wish.

Carnivore would be an example here. The new leaning on ISPs for user records. Requiring archiving of all activity. Or just silently copying and keywording all traffic.

In some ways, monitoring is more dangerous and insidious than censorship as it allows building cases against perceived "enemies" of the state.

You don't say...

Free discussion of ideas is an anathema to both big business and governments. Big business can't tolerate it because it wants to create artificial scarcity in order to maximize profits. Governments can't tolerate it because it makes it easier for people to see through the distortions and lies that governments use to manipulate and control the people.

The internet is the biggest threat to both. When the internet was just a curiosity and required some technical skill to make use of, it posed no real threat to business and government. Now that the average person can easily get onto it, that situation has changed.

And so, governments are increasingly censoring the internet. This is no surprise. Most governments (including that of the "land of the free") have the interests of the people somewhere close to the bottom of the list.

Additionally, governments are figuring out that they can basically do whatever they want without any significant repercussions, as long as they control the military and the law enforcement agencies. The people can't do squat when the government controls all the guns. Control of the internet represents control of information, which ultimately means control over the opinions and actions of the people. And control of the people is very high on the list of the interests of government, because the people in control of government tend to be power-hungry sociopaths (who else has as much interest in acquiring power as they do, and thus as much interest in obtaining positions of power?).

The move towards oppressive, fascist government is a worldwide trend, one which seems to be unstoppable. That's what happens when power-hungry sociopaths who want total control over the population also happen to control all the guns. It's such a shame that a worldwide police state is a stable form of government that's capable of lasting thousands of years (since police states require outside pressure to topple them, and when all the world's a police state, there is no outside).

Enjoy what freedom you have left. It won't last.

Re:You don't say...

Additionally, governments are figuring out that they can basically do whatever they want without any significant repercussions, as long as they control the military and the law enforcement agencies.

Wow! Amazing how nobody ever figured *that* out before.

runs to patent "control of military and police as a method of securing political power"

Google Maps?

Does anybody know why they block that? I can't imagine it is that useful for coup-planning or something like that.

Cherry picking

Where did the study come from?

It chose 41 countries for the survey in which testing could be done safely and where there was "the most to learn about government online surveillance". ...

Countries which carry out the broadest range of filtering included Burma, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, the study said.

Huh. So, you pick 41 autocracies, find there's some web censorship, and conclude that *web* censorship is on the rise.

Just the sort of story /. would retransmit and amplify.

The real reason this is bad...

This is a really bad trend, and one that some governments would jump on for important reasons:

The Internet has really 2 core benefits when you look at it's global impact. First you have people who have great lives and live in great countries who can now see instant information about all the horrid things going on in other parts of the world. It helps to get more people caring about what's going on.

And second, it allows people who live in bad conditions or under oppressive governments to see what it could be like somewhere else. They can learn what they "should" have. That they have human rights. That there is such thing as freedom. It can inspire them.

So, what this does is it gives both sides of the world so to speak the motivation and often the means to reach out to each other - to offer help and to ask for/demand it. To get fired up about change.

It's no wonder that many governments and even corporations are worried about that. But in the end... people will find a way around any censorship and change will happen no matter how hard N. Korea or China or whoever tries to fight it.

Three - no five...

"The filtering had three primary rationales, according to the report: politics and power, security concerns and social norms"

That's four rationales.

Censorship? Ha!

They'll NEVER prevent me fro

[[[NO CARRIER]]]

Well, I think...

I think this is a travesty! I have informed **&&^*&^^&* and ^%%$$$%*, who both plan to organize a rally at &**((**(&%^. If want to help, go to *&*^&*^%&^%&^%&^%&^%%&^%&^%&^ and sign up!

No, really only one primary rationale

Governmental control of the populace.

Anything else is just an excuse to get public support in turning in their rights.

Anonymous, eh?

Hmmm...Whatever you say [slashdot.org]...I can accept that...:-(

If filtering is in the public interest,why hide it

Some of these governments claim that they are doing this filtering for the benefit of the public, to protect national interests, morality or whatever.

OK, so if it is such a good thing, why not make it a transparent process instead of hiding it?

From the BBC report:

"What's regrettable about net filtering is that almost always this is happening in the shadows. There's no place you can get an answer as a citizen from your state about how they are filtering and what is being filtered."

From an SJ Mercury News report [mercurynews.com] on the same issue:

Nine countries, including China, Pakistan and Vietnam, use technology to conceal their censorship, disguising it with techniques such as flashing network error messages.

The Empire Controls HoloNet...

The real question is when are we going to form a world-wide "Rebel Alliance" to combat these bastards?

I'd like to see the world unite against this kind of facist bullshit.

When are we going to take back our government?

Citizen information should be private, government information should be open to scrutiny by its citizens. The administration's got this thing bass-ackwards. Where the fuck were they when they were supposed to be in history class and learning how not to run a country? This has become a facist country over the last 7 years.

And most of all, when are we going to be willing to do more than talk?

Though I'm the one ranting, I don't really have any solid ideas other than so-called "voting" to get a voice. And, I'm sure, this must be controlled by the government to get who they want now. Even then, most Americans can't even tell you where another state is, much less another country, so how can we educate them enough to teach them they're being oppressed by an evil dictator in the making? And being a patriot willing to do more than talk about it will only get you branded as a terrorist and killed. Then they use mis-information to paint you that way to the public and say "see, he was crazy, we need these measures because of people like him".

I'm a reasonable person who is looking for answers like everyone else, but it seems to me we're long past reasonable already. The only thing I can think could fix this is to put an end to lobbyists in Washington that financially manipulate the men and women we, the people "elected" so they can do the job the citizens put them there to do instead of backing companies with the biggest pockets.

I think we're screwed and unfortunately...because of us...so is the rest of the world.

Bad quote steal but..

..it works as well here as for the domain Hilbert was targeting.

"We must know. We will know." - David Hilbert, 1900

Don't Censor Me

Don't Censor Me.
I'm the AACS key.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 wants to be free.

Here's a foolproof way to beat it

[censored]

one statement.....

we need a new web

Re:Cancel your XM, Support Free speech.

it wasn't the homeless guy. It wasn't what he said he would do. It was WHO he said he would do it too. Those people (or their lawyers) got them booted. A few phone calls go a long way.

Not quite

Many countries esp. China and USA require that all communications be open to be listened in on. CALEA pushed it for general comms and under USA PATRIOT act, it forced the issue onto voip, which includes skype. This should be more obvious in light of what has been coming out concerning W's spying on American.

And china, being china, wants total exposure of their citizens all the time.