Bloggers Frighten 'the Authorities'
Governments in more and more countries are afraid of "unregistered" (sic) bloggers.
China was still the leading Internet censor in 2009. However, Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan have all also made extensive use website blocking and online surveillance to monitor and control dissent. The Turkmen Internet remains under total state control. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer remains in jail, while well-known Burmese comedian Zarganar has a further 34 years of his prison sentence to serve.
However, the Report also notes that democratic countries have not lagged far behind, instancing the various steps taken by European countries to control the internet under the guise of protection against child porn and illegal downloading. It also notes that Australia intends to put in place a compulsory filtering system that poses a threat to freedom of expression.
Some people think that blogging and tweets will overthrow governments. Eh...not so fast.
China was still the leading Internet censor in 2009. However, Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan have all also made extensive use website blocking and online surveillance to monitor and control dissent. The Turkmen Internet remains under total state control. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer remains in jail, while well-known Burmese comedian Zarganar has a further 34 years of his prison sentence to serve.
However, the Report also notes that democratic countries have not lagged far behind, instancing the various steps taken by European countries to control the internet under the guise of protection against child porn and illegal downloading. It also notes that Australia intends to put in place a compulsory filtering system that poses a threat to freedom of expression.
Some people think that blogging and tweets will overthrow governments. Eh...not so fast.
Labels: blogging
posted by Chas S. Clifton at 9:05 PM Permalink
1 Comments:
Blogging and similar internet uses may not overthrow governments. But they do allow information to flow from the grassroots in ways that do unsettle the authorities comfortably in place.
Of course, they also have an agit prop function that may be imposed from the top down.
So the authorities could be more concerned about top down agit prop originating from competing authorities far more than bottom up samizdat-like blogging from the grassroots.
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