Censorship for Protection?

Is all Internet Censorship the same? If not, how do the different types differ? Many individuals may not know; however, the United States also participates in Internet Censorship for national security purposes. A recent article on Tech Dirt briefly explores internet censorship, showing where and how censoring occurs. Within the article is a venn diagram that highlights the reasons countries have for censoring data. The three reasons are to maintain: 1) Political Stability 2)Traditional Social Values 3) National Security. Many of the countries overlap between two reasons or even all three.

Most censorship that's in the news today has to deal with countries completely blocking websites out; which most of us can agree (at least in our society) is unethical. China is currently blocking the word "Jasmine" from being viewed due to fear of anti-government protests starting like in Egypt and Tunisia. And some internet censorship isn't even initiated by countries but by "Cyber Terrorists" like recently in Canada. But what about when censorship (like in the USA) is used for National Security?

What do you think... is it ethically correct for a government to participate in censoring for safety reasons?

First Blog

Is it ethically correct for countries to block their residents from viewing internet sites? Over 25 countries have proven evidence of some sort of internet filtering. Countries will either block out certain sites (like China) or block out the internet completely (like Egypt recently). In fact, China has recently blocked keyword searches of the word 'Egypt' since they are afraid of something similar happening in their country.

So if it is ethically OK for countries to censor the internet, is it then ethically correct for residents and other countries to figure out bypasses in order to get onto the internet? This is something that occurs frequently. Chinese residents have used proxies to access certain websites throughout their censored period. According to this article recently written, the United States has created a technology that can deliver media and e-mail to China even if it's blocked.

This topic has many angles it can be viewed from in terms of ethics and I will discuss them in more detail throughout this blog.