Net censorship spreads worldwide

Net censorship spreads worldwide
By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

Repressive regimes are taking full advantage of the net's ability to
censor and stifle reform and debate, reveals a report.

Written by the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) pressure group the report
highlights the ways governments threaten the freedom of the press.

The report has a section dedicated to the internet and the growing
roster of nations censoring online life.

This censorship is practised on every continent on Earth, said the report.

Power play

Although the internet is changing the way the media works as blogs, chat
forums and social networking sites turn passive consumers into active
critics, it is not just citizens who are taking advantage of its
technological power warned the report.

Julien Pain - who heads the internet freedom desk at the RSF and was one
of the report's authors, noted: "Everyone's interested in the internet -
especially dictators".

Mr Pain said the world's dictators have not remained powerless in the
face of the explosion of online content. By contrast, many have been
"efficient and inventive" in using the net to spy on citizens and censor
debate.

In many nations, the net used to be the only uncensored outlet and the
place people turned to for news they would never hear about through
official channels.

However, noted the report, governments have woken up to the fact that
the people they regard as dissidents are active online. Many are now
moving to censor blogs and the last year has seen many committed
bloggers jailed for what they said in their online journal.

For instance, in Iran Mojtaba Saminejad has been in jail since February
2005 for putting online material ruled offensive to Islam.

China was the nation that came in for most criticism for its efforts to
monitor and censor the net. The RSF noted that net censorship in the
country had undergone a significant shift in the last two years.

Originally, said the report, China was only interested in monitoring
political dissidence on the net. Now its scrutiny covers general unrest
in its population - ironically something that has grown because the net
makes it easier for people to communicate.

Jail term

China's success at censorship means it has effectively produced a
"sanitised" version of the internet for its 130 million citizens that
regularly go online.

The wide-ranging scrutiny also means that it is the biggest jailer of
so-called cyber dissidents. RSF estimates that 62 people in China have
been jailed for what they said online.

Net users have also been jailed in Egypt, Iran, Libya, the Maldives,
Syria, Tunisia and Vietnam.

Where China has led, other nations are following and taking active steps
to filter the net before it gets to their citizens. Zimbabwe is
reportedly buying technology directly from China to beef up its
censorship efforts.

Many other nations, including Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Nepal, North
Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, and Vietnam censor the net.
Often this filtering involves stopping access to some types of sites,
such as those showing pornography, but it can also involve blocking
sites critical of governments or religions.

Some nations, such as Turkmenistan, have banned home net connections and
restrict people to using net cafes which, said the RSF, were much easier
to control. Burma has banned web e-mail systems such as Hotmail and
Yahoo mail and every five minutes screen grabs are taken of what people
are looking at in net cafes.

But criticism of the obstacles put before open net access was not
limited to nations known for their repressive policies. The European
Union was criticised too for its policy of leaving the decision on which
sites to censor up to net service firms. This, said the RSF, created a
"private system of justice" in which technicians take the place of a judge.

The 153-page report also criticised Western firms for selling technology
to repressive regimes to help them monitor what people do online.

The report was produced to mark World Press Freedom Day.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4973114.stm