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.
Danny,
ReplyDeleteLots of big news in this area recently. First, there is an article I found on TechDirt, with some cool data on Internet censorship around the world.
Second, a BIG news event that just broke was that Canada was hit by a cyberattack from China. A federal cabinet minister said that "hackers, perhaps from China, compromised computers in two Canadian government departments in early January, leaving bureaucrats with little or no Internet access for nearly two months."
The minister, Stockwell Day, the president of the Treasury Board, told reporters that the attack was more directly focused than were previous strikes against Canada. “It was a significant one — significant that they were going after financial records,” he said.
Read more...
When I first heard about what happened in Egypt was shocked. I would never think that a government would take the communication abilities of the people away let alone had the power to. I strongly felt that there is no kill switch to the Internet and it was a way for people to fully express themselves without government control. I know I know that with the great firewall of China the government censors what its people can see, however too fully remove the ability to express themselves online is a scary thought. We live in an age where the right to express ourselves is an innate human right regardless of what country or nationality are born from. Now I agree it's not a perfect world but the Internet before I found out about kill switch I thought was a way that we as a people can now have a voice above repressive governments. It's crazy to think that if the ability for kill switch to exists, there must be some ways that governments are tied into the Internet to monitor and keep tabs on its citizens. What can we do to create means of communication which is unfiltered or unregulated by government control?
ReplyDelete