SuziavanSwol#10

SuziavanSwol#10 How to Shut Down the 'Net: A Guide for Repressive Regimes

We don't have censorship the way the Chinese do with their own Google, or like the Iranians do when they block access to the internet. But how do we really know? If I do a search through google, how do I know that someone is not censoring my search, or tracking which sites I visit? Oh wait, they do that. Google in America tracks which sites you most frequently visit, and caters your search to your needs. But what if on that particular day I want a recipe for Vanilla brownies and it only gives me Chocolate ones? It seems to me that we are quick to judge the censorship in other countries, but I think that in our own ways we have censorship too, and the internet is a social form of control at all levels, not just in oppressive regimes


How to Shut Down the 'Net: A Guide for Repressive Regimes

Monday, December 07, 2009
By Jeremy A. Kaplan
Facing student protests ahead of today's National Students Day — the anniversary of three student deaths in Tehran in 1953 — the state-owned Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) slowed or blocked completely access to the Internet for most of the state

The Internet may be a worldwide superhighway, but it's all to easy to shut it down. Governments aiming to squelch free speech in don't even have to work hard to do so: It's all too easy to restrict the Internet and keep their people in the dark.

The practice is all too too easy, and all too common.

First, the government talks to the major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that control the flow of data in and out of the country. Not every country has the wide array of ISPs we have in the United States. In many countries, people get online through a limited selection that are authorized to work in the country.

For example, there were only nine ISPs controlling the physical lines connecting China to the outside world in 2002, according to a BBC report at the time. That makes it much simpler for the regime to control information.

And China is well known for restricting access to the Internet for its citizens, a project the country calls "the Golden Shield." The rest of the world calls it the Great Firewall of China. With the agreement and help of those ISPs, the government can control traffic through a variety of techniques, including filters that control certain words, blocks in specific domains or users, even by blocking entire domains (such as .com or .net).