Words: 2013
This research examines and analyzes the role of government authorities and law enforcement groups on the censorship of internet. Many countries faces problem with the freedom of speech that insults the government and also cyber crime that hurts many humans through the internet. The effectiveness of the solution will also be evaluated.
The definition of internet censorship was being research online initially. Search engine like Google are used and site like dictionary. com proves to be useful. Books from national library are the core fundamental through this research. History of censorship, Cyber activism and censorship encyclopedia are among the reference material used in this research. In regards to the freedom of expression have always been different between the east and west continent. The Chinese government proves that the control of internet communication can be achieved unless the government have no interest or will.
In the west, companies that operates through the internet had it’s share of problem and engaged the help of government and law enforcement groups in order to maintain the order and harmony within the cyber dimension. And all these implementation yield successful result and still remains as one of the most effective way. The government does not want to try to control everything on the internet. They strived to create an Internet that is free enough to support and maintain the world’s economy and yet closed enough to tamp down political threats to its monopoly on power.
The involvement of governments and law enforcement groups proves vital in securing and maintaining the order in Internet. Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………. i Table of Contents………………………………………………………………………………… ii 1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………….. 1 1. 1 Objectives……………………………………………………………………………… 2 2. METHODLOGY……………………………………………………………………………. 2 3. ANALYSIS: Internet Censorship: The Police of the Internet……………………….. 3-4 3. 1 Cyber crime: The other side of the globe…………………………………………. 5 4.
CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………………………………6 List of References……………………………………………………………………………….. 6 1. INTRODUCTION The definition of censorship is ‘the act or practice of censoring’ and censoring is ‘Prohibition or suppression of what is considered morally politically, or otherwise objectionable, be it speech, action or expression in any forms’ (dictionary. com). Opennet. net states that internet censorship are limiting access to internet content in hope of “securing intellectual property rights,” “protecting national security,” “preserving cultural norms and religious values,” and “shielding children from pornography ad exploitation.
According to Jones (2001, p1201), global civil liberties organizations condemned the actions taken by government in regards to internet censoring and stated that: “all governments should recognize that the internet is not a local, or even national, medium, but a global medium in which regional laws have useful effect. “Top-down” censorship efforts not only fail to prevent the distribution of material to users in local jurisdiction, but constitutes direct assault on the rights and other interests of internet users and service providers in other jurisdictions, not subject to the censorship law in question”
Internet censorship and content restrictions can be enacted through a number of different strategies like technical blocking, search results removals, take down and induced self-censorship. As the freedom of speech seems to be more prevalent than it ever had been after the invention of Internet, the governments and concerned parties are taking measurement and actions to regulate and attempt to control the excessive abusive freedom of expression on the internet. (opennet. net) Another critical factor mitigating the political use and impact of the Internet is Internet regulation and censorship.
While it is true that many countries have reconciled themselves to the difficulty in censoring or regulating the Internet, many others continue to fund means to curb the free use of the medium to voice dissent or alternative political views (Gan, Gomez & Johannen 2004, p55) 1. 1Objectives My research aims to examine the roles played by the government authorities on the censorship of internet in this information technology age. With the help of extraordinary system of monitoring and filtering, the world shows what a government that really wants to control the internet communications can accomplish.
This will be examined by analyzing the examples of infringement of expression and cyber crime, how the governments and law enforcement authorities deal with the situations and evaluating the result if it is effective. 2. METHODLOGY Internet provided a rich source of information for this topic. Wikipedia and Dictionary. com was among some of the site that surfaced when main keyword “Censorship” are searched through the search engine – Google. Other keywords used on the search engine include “freedom of speech”, “internet filtering”, “internet censorship and government” and “internet in china”. One particular site “opennet. et” was referenced as it offers a good general overview of internet censorship before the objectives was set on internet censorship in China. Books from the National Library of Singapore were the next source of the research. Riley’s Censorship: Library in a book provides many rich and interesting overview of the history, definition and types of censorship. Other constructive books for research include Censorship: A World Encyclopedia by Jones which provides information on the influences and effects by internet in different countries, it also offers some information on internet filtering and blocking.
Gan, Gomez and Johannen’s Asian Cyberactivism: Freedom of Expression and Media Censorship reveals some interesting information on the media censorships in Asian countries. Book by Goldsmith and Wu’s Who controls the internet? : illusions of a borderless world provided constructive analytical information about internet censorship and involvement of governments and law enforcement agencies. 3. ANALYSIS: Internet censorship: The Police of the Internet. According to Jones, the internet is claimed to be the biggest single advance in “information technology” since the invention of print or maybe even supersede it.
Governments are at last confronted by a medium that is almost impossible to control as censorship is technically possible only up to a point (2001, p1196). Ernst Zundel, a German-born neo-Nazi has made extensive use of the internet to spread anti-Semitic messages. The Germany prosecutors order the national telephone company to block users of its T-Online computer network from the accessing Zundel’s site, on the grounds that his outpourings are forbidden under German Law. The only result of this action was that the material was promptly copied all over the internet (Jones 2001, p1196).
New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof wrote in a 2005 column, Death by a Thousand Blogs, “the Chinese leadership…is digging the Communist Party’s grave, by giving the Chinese people broadband”. Even Kristof’s colleague Thomas Friedman stated the Internet and globalization are acting like nutcrackers to open societies” (Goldsmith & Wu 2006, p89). Goldsmith and Wu explains why this conventional wisdom is wrong by showing the example in china, a government’s failure to crack down certain types of Internet communication ultimately reflects a failure of interest or will, not a failure of power (2006, p89
According to Goldsmith and Wu, a fifteen years old teenager named Wang has a posting on the internet with the title – “Long live prostitutes”. In his posting, Wang had collected fifty-four reasons to think Chinese politicians worse than prostitutes. The list included: • There is no indicator that prostitutes will disappear, but there are many indicators that the government will collapse. • Prostitutes allow others to oppose them while the government arrests opposition and “re-educates” them through labor. Prostitutes have no power, unlike those who use their power to suppress others. • Prostitutes win customers with credibility, unlike those who maintain power with lies. • Prostitutes sell flesh, unlike those who sell soul. • Prostitutes do not need you to love them, unlike that group which forces you to love it. Wang’s messages caught the attention of the Chinese authorities and provoked swift action. He was arrested in Henan and subjected to an unspecified punishment.
His story was printed in the People’s Daily as a warning, with the headline “15-Year-Old Youth Punished For Making Reactionary Argument That the Government is Prostitute” Another example, Liu DI was a psychology student at Beijing Normal University who called herself the “Stainless Steel Mouse” and ran an “artist’s club” through her personal website. In 2002, in one of her many stuns, she urged her followers to distribute Marxist literature: “Let’s conduct an experiment of behavioral art: disseminating communism on the street!
We can print copies of the “The Communist Manifesto. ” However, we should take “Communist” out of the title. Then, like sociologists, we ask people on the street to sign their names onto the Manifesto. ” She then wrote an essay titled “How a national security apparatus can hurt national security. ” Echoing typical criticism of governments everywhere, she called China’s security apparatus “limitless,” or possessed of “a tendency to expand, without limits, its size and functions”. The State Security Protection Bureau took action and arrested Liu DI on her university campus.
Her site was shut down and she was jailed and forced to share a cell with a convicted murderer. Her parents were told that their daughter was charged with “being detrimental to state security” she was held for a full year then released subject to permanent surveillance and banned from speaking to foreign journalists or traveling outside of Beijing. When human rights groups and other Chinese Internet users protested for her, the government responded by arresting five Net users who had signed a petition calling for Di’s release (2006, pp 87-89). . 1Cyber crime: The other side of the globe According to Riley, many “netizens” believed that the Internet should remain wide open for free exchange of ideas, that there should be no censorship. They felt that control should remain with individuals (1998, p31). Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay initially started his auctioning site for the neighbor around his residence. As Goldsmith and Wu states, Omidyar site was just a pure interest in hope to help the community around him to buy, sell and trade conveniently with self-policing community.
As time goes by, eBay business grew exponentially and so does it’s problems especially fraud and hackers attack on the site. In 1999, Omidyar had no choice but to evolve it’s strategies and policies from his initial philosophy of a self-policing community. Two hard-bitten crime-fighters were hired, Angela Malacari from law enforcement and her husband, Rob Chestnut, a federal prosecutor. With them eBay began an active policy of hiring former law enforcement officials that continues today.
Malacari became the head of eBay’s fraud investigation team while Chestnut became one of the eBay’s point men in Washington to get Congress to do more about cyber crime and it’s effects(2006,pp132-134). In 2004, eBay’s transformation was complete, the site now boasted that “eBay security team includes former law enforcement officials from around the world,” and explained that eBay was “here to work with the law enforcement in criminal investigations. As Omidyar defended the transformation from his founding vision, “The community really is no longer the way it was in the early days.
My philosophy then was, let the community govern itself. But I realized in 1998 that at a certain point, you have to say, well, there is a part of the community out there that isn’t appropriate. ” (Goldsmith & Wu 2006, p135) 4. CONCLUSIONS With a borderless medium like Internet where crimes and freedom of expression are almost impossible to control even with the implementation of filtering and blocking software by Internet Service Provider and software company. The role of the governments proves to be an essential and effective apparatus for internet censorship and cyber crime.
As Thomas Hobbes argued in the seventeenth century, human beings require “the terror of some power” to force them to behave. This theory is being reinforced throughout the research and examples given in this report. It concludes that freedom of expression can and will only be allowed up to a certain point before censorship and governments enter the picture as human needs to be empowered before they learn to behave. List of References ‘About Filtering’, Opennet Initiative pp. 1-3, Retrieved: 6th June 2008 from http://opennet. net/about-filtering
Dictionary. com 2008. Retrieved: 20th June 2008, from http://dictionary. reference. com/ Gan, S & Gomez, J & Johannen, U(ed) 2004, Asian Cyberactivism: Freedom of Expression & Media Censorship, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Bangkok. Goldsmith,J & Wu, T 2006, Who controls the internet? : illustrations of a borderless world, Oxford University Press, Inc, New York. Jones, D(ed) 2001, Censorship: A World Encyclopedia, Fitzroy Dearborn Publisher, Chicago Riley, GB 1998, Censorship: Library in a book, Facts On File, Inc, New York.