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unplugged
This page considers government efforts to 'unplug' nations
from the net.
It covers -
introduction
As preceding pages noted, totalitarian governments have
sought to restrict electronic media through measures such
as -
- restricting
telegraph traffic from particular locations or entities
- drowning
out transmissions from radio or television broadcasters
in neighbouring states
- requiring
consumers to use devices, such as the Volksempfanger
radio in Nazi Germany, that could only receive transmissions
from an opponent if illegally modified
- limiting
telephone lines to apparatchiks.
Contemporary
authoritarian regimes have on occasion sought to comprehensively
or selectively 'unplug' their nations from the net. That
unplugging might disconnect all users in the nation (or
in a particular location) from the net, so that people
are unable to communicate with each other and with the
outside world. It might instead prevent user access to
a social software site, to major online fora, 'offshore'
news services and search engines. It may be associated
with low teledensity,
representing a deliberate digital
divide.
The most egregious examples of 'unplugging' are Burma,
Nepal and North Korea.
Nepal severed all international internet connections in
February 2005 when the King declared martial law. Burma
shut down all internet connectivity in late September
2007 as part of the military junta's bloody suppression
of protests by buddhist monks, students and other dissidents.
That is described in the OpenNet Initiative Pulling
the Plug: A Technical Review of the Internet Shutdown
in Burma report.
North Korea has largely stayed off the net, with few people
outside the elite cadres having any access.
More selective restrictions to inhibit social mobilisation
during elections or other major events are evident in
Tajikistan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, China,
Uganda, Yemen and Bahrain.
Reporters Without Borders in its China: Journey to
the heart of Internet censorship report (PDF)
for example noted that blog and video-sharing services
were blocked during the Central Committee's changing of
the guard in 2007, with people looking for Google and
Yahoo instead finding that they had been directed to more
compliant local search engines
It
is disturbing that these problems are taking place during
the party congress. The blocking of these sites
comes at a perfect time for the government. Blogs and
video-sharing sites such as YouTube offer ways for Internet
users to share situations they may have encountered
during the congress. Preventing Chinese citizens from
having access to them forces them to rely on the national
media for their information. It so happens that on 15
October, the front pages of all the national newspapers
were virtually identical.
The
463 Blog naughtily reported that
in
celebration of the Chinese Communist Party's 17th Congress
this last week, leaders there apparently decided that
preventing people from seeing cats flush toilets would
make the choreographed proceedings run all that much
smoother.
next page (censorship
in the workplace)
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