[lit-ideas] Information Control

  • From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2006 16:07:48 -0800

The web has become so important that governments are trying to control it. In 
recent weeks:

- The Chinese government demanded that Google censor the search results. Google complied. Chinese users now can not search for "freedom", "democracy", or many other offensive and destablizing words. http://www.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/01/24/google.china.ap/

- A user on Yahoo was sending out emails about China. The Chinese government demanded that Yahoo reveal the user's name. Yahoo complied. Shi Tao was arrested and was sentenced to ten years hard labor. See for example http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14884

- Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger and a researcher for the New York Times, had a blog that used Microsoft's blogging tools. Zhao recently covered a walkout by journalists at the Beijing Daily News after several editors there were fired for writing about recent accounts of police shootings of protestors. The Chinese government demanded that Microsoft shut down the blog. Microsoft complied. See for example http://cryptome.cn/ms-cave.htm

All three major corps: Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google buckled under pressure from the Chinese government. Either censor the web or they will not be allowed to do business in China.

If these huge companies can't stand up to China, then what chance is there for 
citizens?

It's not just the Chinese government. The US government is demanding that Google turn over information on users. AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft have already complied.

The Bush White House is illegally engaged in massive domestic surveillance of US citizens. They are reading emails, watching what webpages people look at, and so on. This is illegal, yet Bush refuses to stop. This has nothing to do with Iraq or bin Laden. One of the judges in the secret court resigned in protest. The New York Times knew about this illegal surveillance for a year, and they didn't publish the information. When they finally published, the Bush White House tried to pressure them into a cover up.

----

The web will continue to grow. It is fundamentally uncontrollable. The music industry, with its thousands of lawyers and computer experts, can't stop kids from swapping music files. Governments are based on ideals, but they also exist in part because they historically had control over information. But the web is undermining that control because users can spread information quickly.

yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com


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