Reporters Without Borders Internet Annual Report Shows Net Censorship Spreading

[mandy]

A full copy of Reporters without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres) 2006 Internet annual report is available for download here (.pdf format): http://www.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/internet_report.pdf

From the BBC:

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...

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

From the RSF report:

Everyone’s interested in the Internet - especially dictators

The Internet has revolutionised the world’s media. Personal websites, blogs and discussion groups have given a voice to men and women who were once only passive consumers of information. It has made many newspaper readers and TV viewers into fairly successful amateur journalists. Dictators would seem powerless faced with this explosion of online material. How could they monitor the e-mails of China’s 130 million users or censor the messages posted by Iran’s 70,000 bloggers? The enemies of the Internet have unfortunately shown their determination and skill in doing just that. China was the first repressive country to realise that the Internet was an extraordinary tool of free expression and quickly assembled the money and personnel to spy on e-mail and censor “subversive” websites. The regime soon showed that the Internet, like traditional media, could be controlled. All that was needed was the right technology and to crack down on the first “cyber-dissidents.” The Chinese model has been a great success and the regime has managed to dissuade Internet users from openly mentioning political topics and when they do to just recycle the official line.

The Internet’s jailers

Traditional “predators of press freedom” - Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Libya, the Maldives, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam - all censor the Internet now. In 2003, only China, Vietnam and the Maldives had imprisoned cyber-dissidents. Now more countries do.

Complicity of Western firms

How did all these countries become so expert at doing this? Did Burma and Tunisia develop their own software? No. They bought the technology from foreign, mostly American firms. Secure Computing, for example, sold Tunisia a programme to censor the Internet, including the Reporters Without Borders website. Another US firm, Cisco Systems, created China’s Internet infrastructure and sold the country special equipment for the police to use. The ethical lapses of Internet companies were exposed when the US firm Yahoo! was accused in September 2005 of supplying the Chinese police with information used to sentence cyber-dissident Shi Tao to 10 years in prison. China is now passing on its cyber-spying skills to other enemies of the Internet, including Zimbabwe, Cuba, and most recently Belarus. These countries will probably no longer need Western help for such spying in a few years time.

http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=578