Global Internet Censorship On the Rise 185
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Unfortunately, there is a huge chasm between having secretive technical means to circumvent the repression of information and cross your fingers that no 'legal' repression will be applied to you directly, and being able to walk down to the local library or bookstore and get easy, unmolested access to whatever info you want.
It's like DRM - it is technically impossible to make it work perfectly. But if it works imperfectly, letting through only the 1% with the dedication, technical knowledge and lack of fea
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you underestimate the human desire for power, wealth, and a challenging task.
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.
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.
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.
Not even close to true. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's a hell of an assumption. I know lots of very technically capable, bright, creative people, who are borderline amoral (at least when it comes to accepting assignments, not necessar
Re:Not even close to true. (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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I realize that the actual control by the people is decreasing everyday (see TFA) but we need to do our best to keep it for ourselves as much as possible.
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And that's completely forgetting the amazingly limited bandwidth of wireless routers. If I want to download a movie from Russia, and traverse the wireless network to get it (how'd it get over the ocean?) then I would be maxing out the bandwidth of every router along the way. That's fine as long
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You know that some of the fastest ARPANet links in the early days were blazingly fast 2400-baud modems, right?
Re:Big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The Internet is useful as a tool for freedom? Do you really, honestly believe that more benefit is gained by those advocating freedom using the Internet in its current form than by governments using it as a tool to monitor their citizens? I'm not so sure. And in any case, I rather suspect that the kind of freedom you're talking about, which might be affecte
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You have this in your sig, and yet you argue that the state should be given the tools to control our communication?
Once you consider what the state can do with those tools - restrain political discourse - I don't see how it's possible for an ethically aware individual to consider issues like defamation, scams, and spam as good enough to even consider giving the state that power. Without fre
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Please read my posts in this thread again, very carefully. At no point have I argued (intentionally, at least) that government should have carte blanche to restrict communications. But in a sense, that is beside the point I am currently trying to make anyway.
Most of my arguments in this discussion relate to holding people responsible for those actions they are able to take. That principle applies just as much to the executive branch as it does to someone abusing the freedom of the Internet, and the judgem
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We disagree i
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But you speak as if "government" is a single, unified entity.
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You seem to have far too much respect for the effectiveness of law, and far too little realization of how frequently government actors are willing to ignore the law to further their personal agenda. Consider the NSA internal spying controversy in the USA: that was blatantly illegal, there were even speci
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Not really, I just accept that a government prepared to sidestep its own laws is probably as willing to develop the tools for this kind of surveillance covertly as to employ them illegally. If the checks and balances of government aren't working, then there are bigger problems than monitoring what the people
A question of perspective (Score:2)
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The reason this is different is that we aren't talking about newspapers, or television, or whatever, we are talking about The Internet.
I don't understand the difference you see here. Just because computers are now being used to distribute information doesn't mean the information is magically protected. This argument reminds me of several patent debates where some company thought adding an 'E' at the beginning of the product name made it an innovative product.
People have been trying to control the distribution of information since humans learned to communicate. Before paper and pen, people had their tongues removed to censor their speech
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In other words, I'm all for freedom of speech unless it actually imparts freedom. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why censorship will continue to rise until the internet becomes just another state-run medium - because 99% of the population of the world is pro-censorship. Everybody believes that there's something out there that needs to be censored for some reason or another. In China, it's harmful ideas that might destabilize
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OMG! My children read this site! I find your use of of the F-word and your posting explicit urls very offensive. I hereby call for your post to be deleted, and your ip banned from ever posting to this site again. Delete Chris whatever's account, now!
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Let's start with you.
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Re:Big deal (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Governments have done this with newspapers and other media for ever.
This is true. And there's always a way around the censorship, so 'big deal,' eh? I've got to say that yeah; it is a big deal. Every time your speech or other communication is curbed arbitrarily it reduces the ability of every person to enhance their lives. Whether impeding science, religion or philosophy it doesn't matter. But every speech has the capacity to help someone affect change in their lives.
Though that's a fairly sweeping statement it's one I believe to be true and, this being Slashdot, I'd hop
Very Big Deal: Difference Between West & Non- (Score:2)
From this list, we can conclude that Asia really has only 3 Western nations: Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Neither Singapore nor Sout
Unrestrained Access (Score:2)
I was going to ask my Chinese colleague ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I was going to ask my Chinese colleague ... (Score:4, Informative)
Good a place as any to throw this one out... (Score:2, Interesting)
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What makes nations sacred? Who gets to decide what constitutes a threat to national security?
Re:Good a place as any to throw this one out... (Score:5, Interesting)
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... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Chemical weapons are against the Geneva Conventions, aren't they?
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Yet, did you not read the deleted sections of the released documents from the US govt on the last story.
Dick chaney wanted to carpetbomb Iran with girls gone wild DVD's and Shakira CD's.
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Yet when I torrent them, the MPAA is all over me about it...
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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mod parent up for appropriateness (Score:2)
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I'm also tired of the individualist vs. collectivist argument. There is a complex feedback system tying individuals and societies together in an interdepe
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You are making the "is-aught" logical error, by saying that the way things are is the way they should be. You are making the more fundamental error of assuming your premises are true, that vi
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Wrong.
Rights are innate. Anything that is not innate is not a right.
Thus, freedom of speech is a right, but freedom from hunger is not. You are born with the right to speak freely... although it takes
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The other problem with the concept of innate rights is that anyone is free to interpret rights however they wish. There is no external,
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Most parolees of violent offenses end up back in prison. By your argument, we should just set them free because prison is ineffective from a pragmatic standpoint. The point of prison is to keep the bad guys off the streets, give them a chance to reform, and to mete out justice (a high-falutin' term for "revenge", "what goes around comes around", "you get what you de
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No it doesn't. They commit crimes aplenty against other inmates, guards, etc. Worse, their hopeless, amoral mentality in a permanent captive environment creates a demand for protection rackets such as prison gangs and fosters sex slavery and rape. These things do not stay isolated among prisoners. When subordinates get out of prison, they often carry on these behaviors at large. Remember the black guy that was d
Tell THAt to the victims of the Bengal Famine (Score:2)
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.
Sooo by your logic it is equally acceptable within the norms of the so-called "Western Traditions" to divide people based on racialist concepts of "Martial race [wikipedia.org]" and "Non-Martial Race", cause famines that killed millions [wikipedia.org] and prevent "N---ers" from public gatherings [wikipedia.org] or walking on roads?
Why is it that all of this High and Mighty western egalitarianism vanished in the case of the Rwandan genocide (where the west did practically nothing) and the Apartheid Regime in South Africa? No oil involved, eh?
Gee th
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I'll never forget the day we circumcised my son. It was only a few weeks after he had been born (it would have been sooner, but he was born premature). One of the doctors actually opposed it, telling us that there was no medical reason to do it. My wife and I decided that, hey, it had been done to me and I was ok, so we went ahead and had it done. After they brought him back (all four pounds of him at the time), he was shivering and moaning like he'd never done before (and has never done since). His wh
Re:Good a place as any to throw this one out... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Don't agree! (Score:5, Interesting)
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You covered the most common argument. The second most common argument is this: If you let them make everyone familiar with their arguments, have the public discussion, and show everyone that they're wrong then many will accept their very well developed and sophisticated arguments when they make them in private.
My argument is much simpler. You can't impose censorship without necessarily censoring the meta-discussion about that
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Re:Don't agree! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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There's a reason the UN can be allowed to make all of its rules and grandiose statements, and that's precisely because it is toothless. If the UN had any ability to force its rules on anyone, it would cease to be. It is only valuable as an organization of hopeless ideals, to point out problems in the hope that someone with ability will fix them.
I know I sound like a troll here, but bear with me.
O Rly (Score:3, Interesting)
another article (Score:2)
Gee... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Gee... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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.xxx isn't a TLD. Maybe if "they" would've succeeded you might have a point.
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I think you missed my point. Go read why .xxx still isn't a TLD, despite the reasonable arguments made in favour and the relatively widespread support, and perhaps you'll understand.
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They(the UN) would probably set up a commitee w/ a rotating chair. This chair(a country) would then set the rules as to what constitutes censorship on the internet. That could be bad if say, North Korea would hold the chair of that commitee. Sort of like having Sudan voted onto the UN Commission on Human Rights. Oh wait...
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Today, the system is reasonably open and anonymous (the other guy's whining about the .xxx domain notwithstanding) and censorship requires clumsy, bolted-on measures like running your whole country behind a proxy. Turning the system over to the UN allows censorship to be applied much more fundamentally. China, Iran, Cuba and Zimbabwe were absolutely upfront abo
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Why would I defend Zimbabwe? Find someone else to take up that particular cause.
Thanks for explaining the argument about UN censorship though. It seems a little unfair to criticize them for something they never did, but my knowledge of this subject is not sufficient to carry out a debate.
I always said it would become a weapon of tyranny (Score:5, Interesting)
Here Here! (Score:2)
Editing archived articles is easy and has been done for many reasons, some of which I'm sure could be attributed to censorship/tyranny.
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Yes, we know that the history media lied about this and it's not 'permanent' record. How many other things were changed because they sounded better, or gave an advantage? How many were changed YEARS later and word of mouth made the false version more prominent, and therefore more accepted?
The ability to change a single website is absolutely no different than the ability to cha
Re:I always said it would become a weapon of tyran (Score:2)
Too late (Score:2)
It Isn't Just Censorship - Monitoring Is Also Huge (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It Isn't Just Censorship - Monitoring Is Also H (Score:2)
So you're saying censorship is bad for enemies? How can that be not good for a country? In the whole censorship thing there is just a BIG conflict of interests. Some people like doing many things that are not legal, but not immoral. And they fear of their own government that they will be screwed. Some other just like privacy for no concrete reason. On the other side,
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However, monitoring is allowing free access but keeping tabs on the activities. Basically giving the citizenry the rope to hang themselves with.
In some cases, monitoring can be used to find terrorists and tru
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They'll never reach critical mass. Why? Because they depend on a dedicated network of users who believe in freedom from tyranny... and there just aren't enough people worldwide who do. Too many people oppose (or at least refuse to support) anonymous routing schemes simply because they might be used by people who they disagree with. Very few people seem to understand that stopping any government censorship means stopping ALL government censorship, even the government censorship they believe is pure delic
Google Maps? (Score:2)
Cherry picking (Score:2)
Huh. So, you pick 41 autocracies, find there's some web censorship, and conclude that *web* censorship is on the rise.
/. would re
Just the sort of story
I understand that we're evil (Score:2)
Thanks for your input, but compared to the professional Big Lie artists at the beeb, you're a relative piker.
Keep at it, however, I hear3 the Hugo Chaves has a gigantic anti-US propaganda machine just firing up. You could do worse than earn decent money in a decent climate, all for doing what you love.
Three - no five... (Score:2)
That's four rationales.
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But, yes, while politics is often about power, it itself is not power...
No, really only one primary rationale (Score:2)
Anything else is just an excuse to get public support in turning in their rights.
Bad quote steal but.. (Score:2)
"We must know. We will know." - David Hilbert, 1900
Don't Censor Me (Score:2)
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.
Re:You don't say... (Score:5, Funny)
Wow! Amazing how nobody ever figured *that* out before.
runs to patent "control of military and police as a method of securing political power"
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Not quite (Score:3, Informative)
And china, being china, wants total exposure of their citizens all the time.