POLITICS ON THE WEB BLOG STANDARD
economist
june 26 2008
uk
Authoritarian governments can lock up bloggers. It is harder to
outwit them
WHAT do Barbra Streisand and the Tunisian president, Zine el-Abidine
Ben Ali, have in common? They both tried to block material they dislike
from appearing on the internet. And they were both spectacularly
unsuccessful. In 2003 Ms Streisand objected to aerial photographs of
her home in Malibu appearing in a collection of publicly available
coastline pictures. She sued (unsuccessfully) for $50m–and in doing
so ensured that the pictures gained far wider publicity.
That self-defeating behaviour coined the phrase "Streisand effect",
illustrated by an axiom from John Gilmore, one of the pioneers of the
internet, that: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes
around it." But the big test of the rule is not whether it frustrates
publicity-shy celebrities. It is whether it can overcome governments’
desire for secrecy.
In November 2007 Tunisia blocked access to the popular video-sharing
sites YouTube and DailyMotion, which both carried material about
Tunisian political prisoners. It was not for the first time, and many
other countries have blocked access to such sites, either to protect
public morals, or to spare politicians’ blushes. What was unusual this
time was the response. Tunisian activists and their allies organised a
"digital sit-in", linking dozens of videos about civil liberties to
the image of the presidential palace in Google Earth. That turned a
low-key human-rights story into a fashionable global campaign.
It was the same story in Armenia in March, where the president,
Robert Kocharian, ended his term in office with a media blackout that,
supposedly, extended to blogs (self-published websites which typically
contain the author’s personal observations and opinions). Like all
other outlets, the authorities said, blogs could publish government
news only. The result was a soaring number of blogs hosted on servers
outside Armenia–all sharply critical of the authorities.
Some countries still think that the benefits of censorship are worth
the opprobrium. China unabashedly blocks foreign news sites, with
state-financed digital censors playing an elaborate game of cat and
mouse with those trying to elude them. Saudi Arabia makes a positive
virtue of the practice, warning those trying to access prohibited
websites of the dangers of pornography: sources cited include the
Koran and Cass Sunstein, an American scholar who argues that porn
does not automatically deserve First Amendment protection.
Such authoritarian countries are increasingly co-operating: Chinese
software for finding keywords and spotting dangerous sites is among
the best in the world. But international co-operation cuts both
ways. If Egypt, for example, buys Chinese web-censorship technology,
the Egyptian bloggers may learn ways to bypass it from their Chinese
colleagues before the technology arrives.
That may keep information flowing fairly freely. But it does not keep
bloggers out of prison. Security officials who once scoffed at blogs,
or ignored them completely in favour of bigger and more conspicuous
targets, are now bringing their legal and other arsenals to bear. A
common move is to expand media, information and electoral laws to
include blogs. Last year, for example, Uzbekistan changed its media
law to count all websites as "mass media"–a category subject to
Draconian restriction. Belarus now requires owners of internet cafés
to keep a log of all websites that their customers visit: in a country
where internet access at home is still rare and costly, that is a big
hurdle for the active netizen. Earlier this year Indonesia passed
a law that made it much riskier to publish controversial opinions
online. A Brazilian court has ruled that bloggers, like other media,
must abide by restrictions imposed by the law on elections.
The chilling effect of such moves is intensified when governments back
them up with imprisonment. From Egypt to Malaysia to Saudi Arabia to
Singapore, bloggers have in recent months found themselves behind bars
for posting materials that those in power dislike. The most recent
Worldwide Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders,
a lobby group, estimates their number at a minimum of 64.
International human-rights organisations have taken up their cause. But
the best and quickest way of defending those in prison may be with
the help of other internet activists. Sami ben Gharbia, a Tunisian
digital activist who now lives in exile in the Netherlands, says that
this beats traditional human-rights outfits when it comes to informing
the world about the arrest of fellow bloggers. He co-ordinates the
campaigning efforts of Global Voices Online, a web-based outfit that
began as a collator of offbeat blog content and has now branched out
into lobbying for free speech.
Such issues were expected to be in sharp focus at Global Voices’ annual
summit in Budapest this week, where hundreds of bloggers, academics,
do-gooders and journalists from places like China, Belarus, Venezuela
and Kenya were due to swap tips on how to outwit officialdom. The aim,
says Ethan Zuckerman, a Harvard academic who cofounded Global Voices,
is to build networks of trust and co-operation between people who
would not instinctively look to the other side of the world for
solutions to their problems.
That is a worthy if ambitious goal. Doubtless, authoritarian
governments are in close touch too, sharing the best ways of
dealing with the pestilential gadflies and troublemakers of the
internet. But they will not be posting their conclusions online,
for all to see. Which way works better? History will decide.
–Boundary_(ID_pAjXD5Kl1XjjbC4QDgL0+w)–