Online Big Brother | Online censorship | Internet censorship

The backbone of democracy is freedom of expression. Throughout history totalitarian regimes have been able to survive by muzzling free speech but have always come down thanks first and foremost to the diffusion of information.

The Internet is a very powerful tool for mass communication and political participation. In the space of a millionth of a second, information circulates from one corner of the Earth to the remotest spots, provided there is an Internet connection. It is not without reason that the Internet is regarded as an information superhighway.

All the repressive regimes on the planet are doing their best to censor the Web. They are well aware that access to information and dissemination of ideas and information by their populations will, some day, bring an end to their reign, and that the best way to prevent this is to control the information superhighway.

We have recently seen the great importance of freedom of expression on the Internet, during the Democratic Revolt in the Arab world.

In the Middle East, it was on the Web that the "Internet and Facebook generation" lit the fire of revolt. The more people will join that generation, the easier it will be for the repressive regimes on Earth to fall, and the more difficult it will be for would-be dictators to take power.

It is our duty to help make free access to a free Internet a fundamental right throughout the world.

Faced with what it considers a major threat to its national security - the invasion of Western culture via the Internet - Iran is considering a new form of censorship, very radical to say the least: disconnect the country from the worldwide Web and substituting it by a national "halal" Internet.

In February, when the democratic revolts were spreading in the region, the director of the Research Institute of the Iranian Ministry of Telecommunications, Reza Bagheri Asl, told the official news agency IRNA that 60% of households and Iranian companies would soon be connected to the new national Internet. According to him, this network will be extended to the whole country within two years.

The deputy of the first economic adviser to President Mahmmoud Ahmadinejad, Ali Aghamohammadi, declared that this will be a "real halal network for Muslims on an ethical and moral level".

The Iranian Wide Web would operate in parallel to the first global network. Banks, ministries and major companies would remain connected to the World Wide Web. But eventually, the halal network could fully replace the global network, and why not "developed and connected to neighboring and other Islamic countries", he told IRNA on 15 April.

Tehran would also consider developing, in the forthcoming months, an Iranian computer operating system to replace that of Microsoft. A search engine is already under consideration: "Ya Hagh", literally "Oh, justice," to replace Google.

However, it does not seem completely certain that the project is feasible. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Even for a country isolated economically from the West by sanctions, the Internet is an important business tool. Limiting access could hinder investment from Russia, China and other trading partners. There's also the matter of having the expertise and resources for creating Iranian equivalents of popular search engines and websites, like Google".

While few observers believe in a complete secession of Iran from the global network, says the WSJ , Iran could well establish a dual-Internet structure as used by a few repressive regimes (see below, Myanmar and Cuba).

We must not be too optimistic, though. In 2009, the Revolutionary Guard acquired a majority stake of the state telecom monopoly that owns Data Communications Iran, its Internet arm. That put all of Iran's communications networks under Revolutionary Guard control. So, Big Brother still has a chance to win. Even if we don't see the advent of the Iranian Wide Web, there will be more and more online censorship in Iran.

1. China : The Great Firewall of China

China has the most cutting-edge online censorship on Earth, thanks to which the world seems to think that all is going well in Tibet and all other provinces. We have all heard how China censored the monster Google.

30,000 persons are employed to control the 250 million or so Chinese surfers. Usually censorship targets domain extensions or specific websites, but The Great Firewall of China is more sophisticated. It censors keywords.

China also invests heavily in the development of state propaganda websites, which is another way of controlling the Internet.

2. Iran

Iran has been censoring the Internet well before the idea of a national Internet was launched. All non-Islamic websites are censored, the objective being to protect Iranians against Western influence.

YouTube, Amazon and Wikipedia are blocked, and Iranians cannot access websites containing sex, politics and religion. It is estimated that more than 10 million websites are blocked by the filtering system.

3. Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia also has a very advanced censoring system, and laws have been passed that criminalize access to sites that go against Saudi laws or Islamic culture.

The Internet Service Unit, which controls all gateways, implements the censorship policy of the government. More than 400,000 websites are blocked.

4. United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates is one of the most wired countries in the region. Censorship policy is to block websites with anything against the political, moral or religious values of the UAE. Contrary to other countries, more than 60% of inhabitants approve online censorship.

5. Cuba

Cuba is such a repressive country that the people live under the terror of censorship: most don't even try to access prohibited content out of fear of being caught.

All ISPs are state-owned, and a filtering system is in place. All websites and all emails are censored.

The main objective of censorship in Cuba is to target political content that is against its political ideology.

6. Syria

Syria is also one of the most repressive countries in the world. The first censorship is in fact poverty: less than 2% of Syrians can have the means to access the Internet. The government controls all ISPs.

Surfers are only allowed to access web pages via the port 80 and no other ports except with prior permission and against payment of a fee. FTP and Skype cannot be accessed via the port 80. Hotmail is blocked.

7. North Korea
The supreme stage of censorship: there is no Internet in North Korea.

Since recently North Korea has a top level domain name. Two state-owned websites aim at propagating the government's ideology.

8. Yemen

Freedom of speech is in general very limited in Yemen and it is the same regarding the Internet.

The telecommunications infrastructure is very limited and this acts as censorship: less than 1% of the population has access to the Internet.

Apart from that, a filtering system is in place. Websites criticizing the regime and its ideology are blocked.

9. Burma

We already know Myanmar for its human rights problems. Web censorship is therefore expected to be very severe.

About 1% of the population has the means to access the Web, mainly through cybercafes which are constantly under control.

Censorship, implemented via a filtering system at ISP level, is to block political content that might go against the current government ideology.

10. Pakistan

Originally the main target of online censorship in Pakistan was anti-Islamic content, but it is now becoming more and more widespread.

All three gateways are state-controlled. The government uses a filtering system to block all undesired traffic.

On 24 May 2011, the website of the Elysee diffused Nicolas Sarkozy's speech at the e-G8 in Paris earlier that morning, in which he called for international agreements regulating the Internet.

Sarkozy wants to limit the right of all citizens of the world to information regardless of frontiers, a right inscribed in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Is seems Sarkozy wants to export his censorship policy to the world: France has passed one of the toughest laws to control and punish people who download content without paying for it, with a three-strikes-and-out law for illegal filesharers. Repeat offenders face a number of punishments, including disconnection from the web.

We must all oppose governments imposing their sovereignty on the Internet which belongs to all the peoples of the world. The Internet must remain independent so that we can all continue to think, write, share and communicate freely.

Google announced yesterday that Gmail accounts of senior U.S. officials, Chinese dissidents, military officials and journalists had been pirated, at the same time indicating that the attack came from China. It was a campaign to collect passwords through phishing. According to a Google official, the objective of the operation is to monitor the content of the accounts of those users.

According to the New York Times of June 12, the United States is working on a global project to deploy an Internet "ghost" as well as mobile telephone systems to allow dissidents to bypass censorship of dictatorial regimes. The investigation is based on documents and secret diplomatic cables.

According to the newspaper, young entrepreneurs and Washington are seeking to develop electronic devices which go unnoticed and are compact enough to be transported in an ordinary travel bag.

Funded by a grant of 2 million from the State Department, this travel bag will pass the borders of a country and the equipment will be quickly assembled to enable wireless communications over a wide area with access to the Internet.

Some of these projects focus on developing new technologies in the United States, while others rely on techniques and tools already created by hackers.

Stealth communications networks allow activists from countries like Iran, Syria and Libya to communicate with the outside world without the government being able to detect them, say the participants in this project.

The United States decided to develop these new technologies after former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, faced with a massive wave of protest, decided to cut the Internet shortly before leaving office. Recently, the Syrian government temporarily halted the Internet in many parts of the country to prevent the mobilization of protesters.

The initiative of the Obama administration is in a sense a new front in the American diplomatic efforts undertaken long to defend freedom of expression and encourage democracy.

For decades, the United States produced radio broadcasts in autocratic countries particularly through Voice of America. More recently, Washington supported the development of software that preserve the anonymity of users in countries like China and trained citizens of these countries to pass information via the Internet controlled by the government without being detected .

This lens was blessed by Squid Angel darcie_french on 06/03/2011 and sukkran on 06/07/2011. Thank you, Darcie and sukkran