As the internet continues to grow at incredibly fast rates, the debate and fear that the government will censor its citizens from viewing certain material is always there. TechRadar, a popular technology site, is now listing many of the countries that actively censor content. Many of the expected countries are listed there. China prohibits its users from visiting anything that could be potentially disturbing to the regime, including many Western sites, gambling, alcohol, and so forth. Saudi Arabia filters much of the outgoing traffic by keywords. As an illustration, it’s very difficult if you’re in Saudi Arabia to get information on breast cancer, because the keyword “breast” will definitely cause the site to be blocked.
However, what I found interesting is the conclusion of the article which points out some of the ways that the UK is looking into censoring its citizens. The IWF (Internet Watch Foundation) has compiled a list of URLs that are known to contain child pornography. About 95 percent of all residential traffic is checked to ensure that the URLs aren’t on this list. If the URL is on the list, the site is blocked, and presumably the authorities are notified. While this in and of itself is most certainly a worthwhile and noble cause, this does raise concerns that since the URL comparison infrastructure has already been deployed for 95% of the UK, it would be an easy transition to block other pesky sites that may have an anti-UK slant.
The UK has also recently criminalized downloading violent pornography. Scotland is looking to take that one step further by making it illegal to possess (not just downloading, but flat out possessing) these types of images. The result? A faint, although perhaps unlikely, chance that police may seize and check laptops at train stations or even airports to ensure that these types of images aren’t on them. Again, the concern is that since this bill is already in place to allow for such checks, how hard will it be to extend the boundaries of what is deemed to be illegal?
It’s definitely hard to see any Western democracy actually making use of this technology to do anything malicious such as banning Youtube or Twitter. However, it’s also hard to argue that the technology and laws are being set up in a way that makes this possible. I’m sure all of us hope that this never happens, but should too much internal strife or threats of war arise, the infrastructure would be there to weed out dissidents. Just add the sites with known affiliations to “the other side” to the IWF’s list and extend the bill to make it illegal to possess anything that could be contrived as being anti-UK. While we’re certainly not there yet, it is a real possibility, and one about which all people in the UK should be concerned.
Popularity: 5% [?]
